Nine days of campaigning to go and I haven’t been milkshaked yet. I’ve hung out near McDonald’s in the hope – anything to get ten seconds on the evening news. It seems that in my constituency, the rank, sanctimonious, narcissistic and dim-witted monomaniacs of the new, kind and gentle left are somewhat thin on the ground. Nigel Farage copped a milkshake early on, and members of rival political parties and the BBC tried to pretend they were concerned. It didn’t work with the
BBC because when the side-splitting but fabulously unfunny comedienne Jo Brand suggested it would be better to throw battery acid at Farage, she was not sacked or even suspended. That kind of remark, along with the ginger-growlered Angela Rayner referring to Tories, unapologetically, as ‘scum’, give succour to the morons with their milkshakes – as well as the other morons with their machetes or guns. It is depressing to think that these people will be hopping up and down with delight on 5 July. I don’t want them ever to be happy. I would like them to remain in a place of seething, impotent fury, perpetually bleating that it’s not FAIR while being prodded with pitchforks by malevolent, right-wing imps.
I have been reminded several times by constituents of a certain age that my nickname in school was ‘Mad Liddle’
There are benefits to standing in a place where one was brought up, of course, but also downsides. I have been reminded several times by constituents of a certain age that my nickname in school was ‘Mad Liddle’ and sometimes ‘Mad Fuckin’ Liddle’ and that as a consequence they are not necessarily convinced that I should be the area’s representative in Westminster. Some of my old teachers are still alive, too, including the clever and charming chap who taught us German and probably grew weary of pupils sieg heiling throughout his lessons. So I don’t think I have his vote, sadly.
I just hope some of them remember a previous election in Guisborough, on 28 February 1974. I stood in my school’s mock general election as the Communist party candidate and won by a landslide. My hero at the time was Jimmy Reid, the CP leader of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders’ union, whose later progression rightwards was, I suppose, mirrored by my own. And yet both of us would argue, with some force, that it is not actually us who have changed at all.
Driving between the disparate parts of Middlesbrough South, I keep Radio 4 on to hear how egregiously they are misrepresenting the public mood. The programme which used to be called World at One has now been renamed, I think, Here Are Some People Who Think That Nigel Farage Is a Tit. On Monday the contributor was Lord Dannatt, the former chief of the general staff, who was asked to explain why he thought Farage was a tit. Dannatt spewed some pompous public-school bile for three minutes, pretty much unchallenged – and nobody was invited to rebut his contribution, or even temper it. The BBC has extraordinarily stringent rules for avoiding bias in its election coverage, but none of it seems to apply to Farage and the Reform party. Nor, under those rules, is the BBC required to reflect the sudden growth in Reform’s national support with greater airtime. Unless it is just to aver, over and over again, that Farage is a tit.
That said, I think it was a rare misstep from Farage over the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and not in accordance with popular opinion. It may be in accordance with the alt-right, pro-Trump and Putin agenda and go down rather better Stateside than here. He is, somewhat unusually, forgetting his constituency. Still, furious though the anti-Reform newspapers and the BBC might have been, none of it really plays big-time one way or the other on the doorstep. The main issues are useless, greedy, arrogant Tories and – a long way second – boring, vacant, woke Labour.
I took a couple of days’ break from campaigning to join my wife on a pre-arranged holiday in the Lake District, with the hobbling dog (who is, I fear, not long for this world of ours). At the end of the check-in at our hotel, the receptionist proffered us a card. ‘Now, this will give you each a complimentary drink in our bar,’ he said. But as I went to take the card, he added: ‘However, if you take this offer, your room will not be serviced tomorrow.’ Such stinginess made me hate him, and our hotel. Next day we asked if breakfast was included in our deal and half-expected the bloke to say: ‘Yes, but if you take up this offer, we will remove two pillows from your room.’ My wife hadn’t been to the Lake District previously and remained unimpressed. ‘It’s full of smug active bastards with their stupid bloody sticks.’ She was not wholly wrong, and later added, as we gazed out over a placid Ullswater and I commented how pretty it was: ‘Whatever. Seen one lake…’
I did quite well at the only hustings, coming second to the very likeable and clever young Labour candidate. I might have won were it not for the fact that me ’n’ Kev – my agent – decided to hightail it as soon as our debate had finished and get a round in at the pub, not knowing that voting was about to take place. We took with us a handful of supporters who might have swung the poll. On such misunderstandings do governments fall and other governments rise. A day or so later I was handing out leaflets in the main drag and may have caused two octogenarian women to come to blows. ‘Poor, poor Rishi,’ one of them intoned, while the other responded: ‘Poor? POOR! He’s as rich as Croesus!’ and a spat broke out. I smiled my goodbyes and shuffled off down Westgate as I heard the handbags being primed for immediate action. Just remember, all of you, in Boro and beyond: vote early, vote often, vote SDP. Or, for that matter, Reform.
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