Thursday, June 09, 2022

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Useful for scaring off Conservative tellers at remote polling stations

My experience of parliamentary by-elections goes back to Birmingham Northfield in 1982, but that's nothing to Lord Bonkers.

Drawing on his experience, however, I have written to the ALDC sharing his top about the gorilla suit and remote polling stations.

Useful for scaring off Conservative tellers at remote polling stations

You can imagine how peeved I was when I discovered that I had missed a great Liberal Democrat victory: positively pea green with peevement. When winter fires burn low and talk turns to by-elections long ago, tales will be told of North Shropshire – of Wem and Ellesmere – and those of us who were not there will understand it is our part to fall silent.

I wasn’t having that a second time, so I quickly arranged a tour of our best prospects for May’s council elections: Richmond upon Thames, Montgomeryshire, Edinburgh and finally polling day in the Somerset Levels. 

Normally, I would have had my valet pack my gorilla suit for such an itinerary – I find it useful for scaring off Conservative tellers at remote polling stations – but in view of my recent misadventures I thought it wiser to let light tweeds suffice.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.


Earlier this week

2 comments:

Matt Pennell said...

I notice that The Face and i-D have both recently said that tweed is making a massive comeback - to me this is controversial because I don't think it ever went away. I'm not surprised Lord Bonkers is massively popular with today's youth despite being born in the mid-80s, 1880s that is.

crewegwyn said...

Does our noble Lord recall the Liverpool councillor who used to take voters to the polls in his carriage, drawn by zebras?

Cross I think he was.

And his opponents certainly were!