Monday 29 June 2020

Elect Ability

You do realise, don't you, that I have been there and done that? I have stood for Lanchester Parish Council four times, three of them successfully. I have stood for Derwentside District Council. I have stood for Durham County Council. 

I have stood for Council of Governors of County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust; the first time I was elected unopposed, and the second time I lost by four votes on a recount. I have stood for Parliament, which you all said that I would never do. I also served eight years as a governor of a primary school, and eight years as a governor of a comprehensive school.

So I have nothing to prove. And so much for being "an eccentric loner". Check out the endorsements of my books on that one, too. Check out my character witnesses. Check out my Campaign Patrons, and who proposed me for Parliament. But I am too ill for elections now. In any case, it is time for people whom the voters might like better. It cannot be said that I never tried.

Any later than 2007, when I was elected to the Parish Council for the third time, nowhere could have expressed a clearer view of my electability or otherwise than Lanchester has. When the time came, then it would richly deserves the beautifully alliterative name of my peerage. The people who decide these things are not everyone who might turn up at random on a jury.

More immediately, Ward by Ward, vote for whoever was best placed to defeat Labour at next year's elections to Durham County Council. Deprive Labour of every seat, and then work with what came next. The most prized trophy of all is, of course, the Leader's seat. And the unseating of this particular Leader is a matter of national and international importance.

It would be heard from the souks to the favelas, from the Dalit colonies to the Rohingya camps, and from Kashmir, to Crimea, to the scattered outposts of Diego Garcia. We would make sure of that. Armed with an impeccably local running mate in order to stop the target from slipping through, some of us know just the man to do this. They would dance in the streets of the annexed Jordan Valley at his election, and not least at his election against this opponent. And we would show them doing it. The Internet was invented for this.

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