Green claims to have won St Peter’s ward have been shown up to be (at best) arrant nonsense. They claimed to have been able to see through the paper of the European ballot papers and to have spied a Green victory.

Fact 1: the paper was entirely opaque at the ‘verification’ stage of the count last Friday – the only point at which it would have been possible for ballot papers to have been associated with particular wards. The papers were checked face down as required by European election regulations (ballot papers can only be laid out in public face up once the vting in all other European countries is complete – two days later!)
Fact 2: the county council ballot papers were, by contrast, verified face up and so it was possible to do sample counts of how the parties had done within a district ward. This we did along with the other parties. The Liberal Democrats were well ahead in all polling districts in St Peter’s Ward.