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During a 43 year journalistic career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), for our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, covering elections has always loomed large – and now the most bizarre one of all has just taken place, which all the main parties boycotted, and a man with a bin on his head secured a huge number of votes.
For extraordinary events I thought nothing could top the election to the Welsh Parliament/Senedd Cymru (WP/SC).
In that one the nationalist party Plaid Cymru (Plaid) won the most seats, and for the first time in 27 years of devolution formed a majority Welsh government.
But we have just witnessed something that, while totally different, is even more incredible.
The by-election in Clacton, which was won by a man who is under investigation over a five million pound donation he received from a Thailand-based billionaire.
All the main parties boycotted this election (condemning it as “fake”) and Count Binface, a perennial joke candidate, managed to attract 27 per cent of the vote, with another 32 also-rans getting 10 per cent between them.
But the result won’t stop a Metropolitan Police (Met) investigation into money for Reform UK, questions about Nigel Farage’s friendship with a convicted fraudster, or the parliamentary inquiry into why he did not register the multi-million pound gift/donation.
Mr Farage won (if that’s the right word!) with 63 per cent of the vote, but the whole thing was entirely unnecessary.
He chose to step down and force a fresh election in order to deflect the heat he was getting over his personal finances, and donations linked to a friend known as ‘Posh George’.
Mr Farage did not turn up to the count (not the ‘Binface’ one!), claiming there was a security threat against him (a claim denied by local police), and he cancelled what had been billed as a “major speech”‘.
The solid margin of victory should therefore give Mr Farage little solace; indeed, it is an embarrassment that a sheer novelty contender did so well.
“It’s all a bit of a farce”, declares one Clacton resident.
The Conservatives have stubbornly refused to die: they are polling 20 per cent on average, just a few points behind Reform UK, undermining his argument that right-of-centre voters need to consolidate behind his party.
Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, is much more popular among Reform UK voters than Mr Farage is with Conservatives, according to data from YouGov, suggesting that her party may find it easier to attract Reform UK supporters than the other way round.
I’ve never seen anything like this. Nor, presumably, will have Count Binface.
The memories of Phil’s decades-long award-winning career in journalism as he was gripped by the rare disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now!
Soon on The Eye, he looks at how in his journalism polling figures have always been central because they show voters’ views on a controversial policy or party, and they could be a major factor today as the popularity of the Plaid Welsh Government (WG) drops or rises as it meets the huge challenges facing Wales, as well as in elections now around the world.
Next week – the backlash is growing even more today, following news that disgraced former BBC presenter Huw Edwards is on a media outlet after he admitted accessing sickening images of underage children, and his writing a poem for the National Eisteddfod.
