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There were also legal letters sent to the party after they posted on social media an implication that Reform's candidate, Llŷr Powell, had links to Vladimir Putin - an accusation the party firmly denies. They also referred to bribes taken by a former Reform leader. After the result, Powell said he had been subject to death threats and harassed during the campaign and he blamed Labour for that. "I'm very disappointed and thankfully the voters had seen through their smear, fear," he said. "They deserved to be in the gutter like their campaign belonged." Irranca-Davies said the party needed to run "positive campaigns" and they "failed singularly" "to talk about the investment in that constituency and in health". He said of his party's candidate, Richard Tunnicliffe: "I don't think Richard could have done any more, quite frankly... Labour got squeezed out of this contest. "We weren't really in it, and it was from quite early on, when some of the early polling came out, people were making a really clear choice, saying, how do we stop Reform? "I hope that what we do as we go forward now and into May is on a very positive footing about what the offer will be- what our record is, defending against austerity and what we've done over the last 12 months."
