Redrup on the up - Lib Dems secure controversial Wootton Bridge seat
ran the headline on the Isle of Wight Radio website.
I welcomed news of another Liberal Democrat local by-election gain, but wondered why Wootton Bridge is 'controversial'.
It turns out that that problem lies not with the ward but with its former councillor. Daryll Pitcher, who had represented it for the Vectis Party, resigned from Isle of Wight Council three months into a sentence for child sex offences.
You can read more about Pitcher and the Vectis Party, which he led, in the archives of the On the Wight site.
The Vectis candidate in yesterday's by election, incidentally, was Pitcher's mother. Maybe she's a formidable local politician in her own right, but I was reminded of something my late mother used to say.
If the wife of a disgraced politician was filmed 'standing by' her husband, my mother would say she was behaving more like his mother than his wife.
Anyway, congratulations to Sarah Redrup, the victorious Lib Dem candidate. In a happier family connection, her father is already a Conservative member of Isle of Wight council.
At the 2019 general election, the Lib Dems did not field a candidate here, standing down in favour of the Greens. Yet, in a reminder to those who fantasise that parties can deliver their votes en bloc to someone else, the Green vote went down.
But the Isle of Wight was held by the Liberal Party between 1974 and 1987, and by the Lib Dems between 1997 and 2001. And this is our second council by-election gain there is recent months.
The island will be split into two constituencies at next year's general election. I don't think we'll be stepping aside in either of them.
2 comments:
To paraphrase the great author Oolon Colluphid, mentioned in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Well that about wraps it up for the Vectis Party.
This result is a very odd one. Thw Vectis Party is basically the creation of a group of old UKIPers, led by the former member who was forced to resign. Over the past 20 years the Wootton Bridge seat has been a Tory/UKIP marginal. It voted overwhelmingly for Brexit, has a large elderly population and areas of low income. Chesham and Amersham it is not.
So why the sudden Road to Damascus converstion to liberalism ? The succesful candidate is young and female, her father may well be a Conservative councilllor but she is also comes from a well known Island family (they run a popular chain of bakers on the IOW) and she campaigned on a local planning issue. She has been active in the party for less than a year. For those of us who rather pompously see politics as a battle of ideas, this is all a bit depressing.
Which leaves me pondering two things. First of all, does this win for the off spring of a prominent local family represent a concentration of power and thus the a failure of democratic politics ? (which is what we would say if another Bush or Kennedy made it to the wite house ?) Secondly,and more critically, is this sort of politids scalable ? A popular young, well connected candidate campainging on non political issues can work for us in local elections and indeed in by elections, but we are going to need a lot more when it comes to the "big one", surely ?
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