Well there we are then, the Newport West Senedd election is over and the voters (those who actually turned out to vote that is) have spoken. It was an interesting Senedd election campaign, somewhat overshadowed by covid, and the consequences of covid. There should be another massive thank you to my wife, my agent, my somewhat limited campaign team and the electors of Newport West for their support. Weather-wise it was was a strange campaign as well with possibilities of hail and / or torrential rain and bright sunshine (although admittedly without any heat) - sometimes all within the same hour.
Any election, should give every candidate the opportunity to listen to, to talk to and to meet with many Constituents, during the course of what should become a prolonged walking tour of (at least in my opinion) one of Cymru / Wales's more interesting constituencies. Covid largely put paid too that with leafleting only being aloud from the 12th April and restricted canvassing only being allowed after that date - which left the best part of three weeks.
Elections are not simply about the voters and the candidates, a whole host of people work very hard behind the scenes to make things work smoothly, including the Retuning Officers, their staff, the council staff who run the polling booths (for some hours on polling day done if then were literally in the dark and the cold) and the staff who count the votes and the other council staff and the Police who work tirelessly to make the count function flawlessly - all of which happened within the midst of covid pandemic restrictions.
At least for once, it was decided to count the votes on the Friday following Polling day, which was far more civilised than counting the votes in the early hours, something that we managed to do this in 1999 and life as we know it did not come to an end. Personally I hope that this temporary change becomes a permanent change - I could not help noticing that this time round the sky did not fall.
Post election, in Newport West (and elsewhere) former candidates and even for the successfully elected candidate life can now begin the odd process of returning to some form of normality. For the next few weeks after returning to normal sleep patterns and a normal intake of coffee may be something of a priority, that and resisting the strange desire to knock on the doors of perfect strangers and push leaflets through complete strangers letter boxes.
Now that the sound and the fury have faded, and the door knocking and on the street conversations blended into one former candidates can sensibly take stock and perhaps some reflection. As a candidate, no matter the result, you should neither make instant decisions about your future nor say anything in the heat of the moment that can come back and haunt you further down the line.
This is no glory in politics, merely hard often unappreciated effort, any dreams of political immortality / longevity should regularly doused with hard cold realism. I personally learned that lesson a few election campaigns ago having been featured on the front page of a local newspaper in relation to the well supported local campaign to Keep Abergavenny Livestock Market I had the quite surreal experience of going to buy some chips in a local chip shop with a friend only to sit-in the queue to observe myself literally being wrapped around chips (Sic transit gloria mundi - or "Thus passes the glory of the world”.
No comments:
Post a Comment