Election Reflections
My Experience As A Parliamentary Candidate in Swansea West
Last week I stood for Parliament in the constituency of Swansea West as the Reform Party candidate . I got beaten badly into second place. For every 10 people who voted for Reform 23 voted for Labour. I wasn’t the only loser in Swansea West on 4th July though; far from it.
Strange as it may sound, the biggest loser was the Labour Party, whose share of the vote slid to 40%, in 2019 it was around 55%. Worse, for them, in what was once considered a Labour stronghold under half the population voted – so much for Labour being the party of the working man. The imposition of a darling of the Westminster machine as a candidate rather than a local person – or indeed anyone who had experience of life outside the Westminster bubble - did them no favours. However the thing that resounded on the streets was the existence of Reform; as one (presumed) Labour voter explained “Nigel Farage is saying what I’m thinking.” That’s where my vote came from – the disenfranchised.
Of the other parties, the Conservatives (who aren’t big in Swansea) barely bothered. Their candidate deigned to turn up for the count, the first time I’d met her. Plaid and the Lib Dems kept about the same vote share that they always seem to get (apart for 2010 where, with an excellent candidate they came within 500 votes of victory). The former are damaged by complicity with the Welsh Labour government; the latter by a ludicrous campaign based on their leader falling over. The reduction of politics to third rate entertainment is a topic for another day, but it’s not progress.
The candidate I liked most was the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition chap; we agreed about almost everything apart from public ownership. Sadly he lost his deposit.
Campaigning
Enough psephology. Let’s get down to the practicalities.
The object of the exercise is to get more votes than the others; the question is how? The July date caught me on the hop (I was convinced it would be November) and on the way to a holiday. My partner informed with a single glance me that holiday cancellation wasn’t an option. As Reform has a reasonable database of supporters, I had already built a constituency website and Facebook page (I don’t do “X”) and had been in the constituency many times over the years, I happily set off for the sun.
On my return the first imperative was to get nominated. This requires the signatures of 10 residents in the constituency on a form delivered and verified personally by the constituency’s returning officer before the (looming) deadline. I sent a message to the registered Reform supporters and got sufficient positive responses. After a hectic day chasing round Swansea I had 16 signatures, although only 10 could be found on the electoral roll but that was enough. £500 of my cash was placed into the Swansea Council safe as my deposit and I was in the race. (You get the deposit back if you get more than 5% of the votes cast).
Tiresomely I live in Kent. (My plan is to move to Wales, but Rishi’s snap election caught me short). This meant a lot of driving up and down the M4 in the early days. For the last fortnight I booked into a vile studio flat, sadly my personal finances couldn’t support more than that and being in Kent during the early days kept me earning in my day job (I’m a HGV1 driver). For sure this cost me some votes and some opportunities. However, as one of the Reform electoral sages once said, “Campaigning is about doing what you can, whenever you can, wherever you are with what you have got.”
Leaflets
As a newish party it seemed to me that the key mission was to ensure that every voter in every household knew of our existence and how to vote for us. That comes down to leafletting – pushing leaflets through letterboxes. There are some 30,000 dwellings in Swansea West so I designed and ordered 20,000 leaflets, thinking that at some time I might want to change the format or messaging.
The practicalities of leaflet design revolve around getting it through a letterbox quicky and without feeding your fingers to dogs, cats or flaps on the other site. Having had a fair bit of experience from other campaigns, I went for double sided A5 in the heaviest paper I could find (320 gsm). Picture of me, Reform turquoise background, Reform logo, QR code to my website and a few words. The major Reform themes were (and are) controlling migration, ending the lunacy of net zero, fixing waiting lists and raising the personal taxation threshold. As I have written a book on the challenge of net zero and that idiotic policy which had already closed the nearby Port Talbot blast furnaces my leaflet focussed on that.
Delivering leaflets is simple in theory; pick a street, start at one end and post leaflet through every letterbox. In reality, sprung double letter boxes needs a tightly rolled leaflet and, ideally, a wooden spoon in the other hand to force the box open. (The risk to fingers of dogs and psycho cats is real - one of my team got their hand mauled.) Then move to the next door, and repeat.
Next door is much more accessible in a terraced street with no front gardens than in one with front gardens, semis or detached houses. It’s also a heck of a lot easier if the doors are at street level. In Swansea they often aren’t;10 to 15 steps up and another 10 to 15 steps down between houses burns calories and tortures legs. My partner spent a heroic 3 hours around Mount Pleasant in which she walked some 5 miles while climbing some 80 stories carrying 10 kg of leaflets. Anyone who has had anything to do with leafletting has nothing but admiration for Postman Pat! It’s hard, unrelenting graft.
At one minute per house delivering a single leaflet to 30,000 houses would require 500 person hours of effort. One leaflet a minute is just about achievable with terraced houses whose frond door is on the street. Most houses aren’t of this sort and therefore take longer. That leads inexorably to the question of prioritisation. We could really only do that at Ward level and focused on the Brexit supporting wards, after all Reform evolved from the Brexit Party. This was further tempered by where my ten strong leafletting team could get to. We eventually delivered some 27,000 leaflets.
Social Media
I posted regularly on the Facebook page and with increasing frequency. It turned out that the page form 2019 was also still live, so I ran that too – followers of either being reluctant to switch. I tried several formats, some of which worked. The one that developed most traction was the video I posted demonstrating that the (Labour) Welsh Government spends almost five times as much capital on climate change as it does on health or education there was uproar and a wall of misinformation from eco-nuts, socialists and Plaid. It’s true though.
The Farage factor lit up Reform’s social media giving us something like five times the activity of Labour, who spent hundreds of thousands (or more) on advertising. Reform spent nothing like that for the terribly simple reason that it didn’t have the funds. Certainly the young Reform supporters (of whom there are many in Swansea West) were impressed by the performance on “X”. However the only X that counts is the one on the ballot paper; the translation from social media to pencil on ballot paper is not direct. I spent about £250 on Facebook advertising (the cost of about 5,000 leaflets). I don’t think it will be possible to analyse the ROI – the brutal, wonderful truth of elections is that only the voter knows why they put their cross in a particular box
I was prepared in theory for a barrage of abuse on social media. It got to me after a bit, so I made the executive decision to delete and block anyone who wrote a post on my page that I found offensive, which worked. Getting into social media spats is a waste of time that would be better spent chatting with real people.
Hustings
I had expected there to be more hustings. I was only invited to one, organised by the Swansea Climate Action Network, an offshoot of Swansea University and Extinction Rebellion I’m told. It was all terribly civilised. The Tory didn’t turn up and Labour’s candidate, Torsten Bell, really only came to case the opposition. His only substantive answer contained the lie that Labour can make electricity generation CO2 free in five years. He left before the end, his three Starmtrooper minders escorting him to a vital zoom meeting.
There were no other open hustings in the constituency. I suggested to the local business network, which I’ve been a member of since 2016, that they might like to hold one, but they hid behind political neutrality. The awful truth of Swansea and Wales is that it is in the tight grip of a Labour Party that has a totalitarian tendency. Boat rocking is not popular, despite the streets being filthy and the hospital utterly inadequate.
People
The only time, therefore, that I met voters was when I was leafletting, eating out or walking about. Almost all said they were voting Reform. Perhaps 20 people demonstrated their low IQ and called me a fascist or racist, ten or twenty times that came up and wished me luck, including an Indian restaurant owner and a Muslim taxi driver.
On the day before the election some supporters had a banner over the M4 at rush hour. It’s unscientific, but probably we got five waves and hoots to every obscene gesture (lefties really are not pleasant people). Heeding the Bezos adage that when data and narrative conflict, go with the narrative I settled down for polling day thinking that a win was possible and not worrying about losing my £500 (which I need to pay for a car’s service).
Polls
Every single poll was wrong. That is wrong about Swansea West, wrong about Wales and wrong about the national outcome. I tried to ignore them; whatever they said they had no impact on my actions as all I had to do was get up, produce and post something, go leafletting.
The problem pollsters have is that they use clever models and sophisticated mathematics to predict aggregated outcomes of tens of thousands of human actions. As anyone in business (apart from classical economists) knows, humans (and consumers) are not rational. Their actions are therefore not predictable. Their understanding of which policies might be in their best interests is overlaid with emotional attractions or revulsions.
Nowhere was this more obvious that in Wales. For reasons that predate Lady Thatcher, the Welsh seldom vote conservative. That’s how in Swansea they vote 60% Labour but 55% to leave the EU. For all the column inches of speculation on Reform taking votes from Tories, in Wales that wasn’t relevant because there are near zero Tory votes.
Unfortunately, despite their appalling track record and rotten simplifications polls dominate headlines during elections. Rather than journalists going through policies and quizzing ministers on them, they simply quote the latest misinformed poll and speculate on what that means. This merely embeds the ideas of “Labour super majorities” or “vote Reform get Labour” (the reality actually was vote Tory, get Labour). I understand that Sir Ed Davey’s antics were entirely designed to be media attractive and thus improve polls, certainly I still have no idea what the LibDem policies were.
As far as I can see polls perform no useful purpose and might well distort voting. An election would work at least as well without them, possibly rather better. If I had the chose I would scrap them.
Media
I had one interview for the BBC for a programme to be broadcast on the Tuesday before the election. The reporter, a Swansea girl herself, had no idea why she was to be covering such a “safe labour seat.” The interview was scrupulously fair and the edit wasn’t too unkind. I also had two with a minor TV network. No radio, no newspapers – most of which are now merged. It seems that political journalism is dead; the media is largely a clearing house for press releases it is unable to question.
Getting the message across at local level, certainly in Wales, is a huge challenge for non-incumbents. It's hard not to get the sense that the press are content with the status quo – Labour hegemony and a little Plaid– rather than challenging them on their appalling record. Welsh Labour act as a mafia crime family.
The nadir of political journalism was achieved by Channel Four and their reporting a defamatory publicity stunt as “news” - which was regurgitated in every other outlet. Even the usually sober Charles Moore of the Telegraph treated it as a fact; the mainstream media’s collusion in propaganda is alarming - do they aspire to becoming the UK’s equivalent of Pravda? There is no doubt that the episode hurt Reform and it's candidates. How many votes it cost is unclear. Certainly more people called me a racist fascist.
The Count
There's not much for a candidate to do on the day of an election. I decided to visit as many poling stations as I could (there were around 100 in the constituency) and thank the staff. They are council employees who take a day’s holiday and are then paid by the Electoral Commission to be the Polling Officer. Eventually I made it to about 20, all of whom were surprised and delighted that a candidate had made the effort.
At one of the stations I saw the Labour Party machine in operation; a rosetted and forceful supporter leaning on a fence that every voter had to pass and engaging them in “conversation.” It’s lawful – about the only thing that you can’t do is obstruct access to a polling station, but it looked tawdry. The station’s presiding officer (as the senior electoral official is known) had seen it but taken no action. I took his photograph, which upset him enormously. At other stations I encountered the hoard of Labour Party tellers – people who try to work out who has voted by asking to see their voting card. Again, it’s lawful and again it can be intimidating.
And so to the count. Each candidate is allowed and may take their partner, their agent (I was my own) and up to five counting agents, whose roll is to ensure that the count is scrupulously fair. Notwithstanding conspiracy theorists (most of whom spend too much time on X) counts are impeccably run. First the votes are verified, that is the contents of every box from every polling station are counted and matched against the number of ballots issued in that polling station. Then the ballots are sorted by votes for candidate and finally they are counted. (If the vote is close then there may be a recount. And another).
The count was being held in the magnificent Swansea Guildhall, with the count for the Gower constituency being held concurrently – they had different coloured ballot papers to prevent confusion. The 70 or so counters swung into action and Team Reform watched. Other parties had different approaches. The LibDems had spotters, desperately trying to tot up votes as the boxes were opened, which they routinely reported to an earnest young person with a laptop. The Labour machine was doing the same, with Starmtroopers equipped with identical clipboards barging people out of the way. These minor Labour Party apparatchiks seemed fired with a self-righteous zeal and a contempt for other parties or, indeed, individuals. Their candidate was nowhere to be seen.
No observed is allowed to speak to the counters, nor to touch a ballot paper. I wandered about, largely on the basis that leadership is about being seen, trying not to read too much into the ballots I saw (they’re sorted face up). That said it was hard not to feel a thrill as one saw 20 or so votes in a row. Looking over the shoulder of the LibDem counters (obviously Starmtroopers wouldn’t permit such things) it looked close. I had three speeches in my head, (win, close loss, distant loss), and honed them as I sauntered about the place. Early on I did a couple of pieces for the media. As the evening progressed it became clear that I’d lost, but the announcement of the awful low turnout of 48% meant it was hardly a Labour victory, with just 20% of Swansea voters endorsing them (the 2019 figure was 32%).
One moment of comedy was reviewing the spoiled ballots – that is anything that didn’t have an X clearly in a box, and nothing else. Some had pride stickers, some had detailed commentary on all the candidates. The best had a well-drawn picture of male genitals with an arrow pointing to the tip of the penis, perfectly contained within the box for Torsten Bell. As all the ink was within the box and there were no other marks it was deemed a valid vote for Torsten – I’m not convinced that was the voters intent, but that’s what they achieved.
Finally to the announcement. The Returning Officer took all the candidates aside and told us the provisional outcome. We agreed it was clear and fair, so that was it. He quickly explained the process of the announcement, to be conducted by him and the High Sherriff (in a magnificent hat) in English and Welsh. He then said that he didn’t anticipate any runners up speeches, a relief really as it was late and there’s little to say. We duly trooped onto the stage, heard the figures and then listened to Torsten’s speech. (
The audience was some 20 or so Starmtroopers, 80 or so people from other parties and maybe 150 or so counters. All of us just wanted to get home. Stepping to the microphone to much noise from the Starmtroopers and a smattering of insincere polite applause, Torsten thanked everyone under the sun and then did what the Labour Party does best – lied. He said that he would deliver Swansea form the consequences of 14 years of Tory misrule, blithely ignoring the reality that Swansea is largely governed from the Senedd in Cardiff, which has been under Labour control since it was created 30 years ago. Swansea’s problems are caused by Labour government.
After what seemed an age, the new MP then swept out with his Starmtrooper acolytes, en route for London to deliver his vision of a Brave New World. I’m not sure I want any part of it, which means that I must stand again and challenge him and the Labour Party at every possible opportunity.
Watch this space.
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Superb. Great insight into what a new party has to face at an election. You deserved a better return, and the good people of Swansea West also deserve better than Layzee Labour. Other Uniparty flavours are available upon request..... all of them useless.