Name: Neil Hamilton.
Age: 67 tomorrow!
Appearance: Identikit Tory, bow-tie edition.
Except he’s not any more, is he? Didn’t he leave politics in 1997 after that whole unfortunate business? The Louis Theroux documentary?
More the cash-for-questions scandal that led to him doing the documentary. Oh, yes – and the libel action against the Guardian, which collapsed. The action, not the Guardian.
And the one against Mohammed Al Fayed. Which he lost. The 90s were funtimes.
And now he’s back in the news? Why? Our pal Neil, who became deputy chairman of Ukip a couple of years ago, is now standing for a regional seat in the Welsh assembly elections in May.
Didn’t Ukip once call for the abolition of the Welsh assembly? That was then. This is now.
What has changed? Because the Welsh assembly uses proportional representation, Ukip could do much better there than it did with its thrillingly poor showing in the general election. Mark Reckless is standing in South Wales East and the party’s leader in Wales, Nathan Gill, will run in North Wales.
How many seats could they win with what I imagine to be a manifesto of kicking all but the pure-blood druids out of Cambrian lands and turning the Eisteddfod into a singalong session to one of those tres amusing viral YouTube videos with Nigel Farage’s head stuck on a dancing orange? Polls estimate they could end up with nine, mostly nicked from the Welsh Liberal Democrats.
How likely is it though, really? Wales’s first minister, Carwyn Jones, says they will be pushing the message that Ukip in Wales is not a Welsh party but a branch of one totally dictated to by London. “We’ll be saying: do you really think these people have policies that suit you and Wales?”
But they might. True. He did also note that Ukip was a party that attracted the votes of people who are non-specifically angry about stuff. And there are as many of those in Wales as there are anywhere else. More, really, if you count those riled by the constant rain.
Hmm. And Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood said the “background noise” of the EU referendum would help Ukip.
A rising tide of effluent lifts all boats? Exactly. What’s Welsh for “We’re doomed”, d’you think?
Do say: “Vote ‘dim’! That’s, confusingly, Welsh for ‘no’. Don’t try to insult him and accidentally vote him in.”
Don’t say: “Land of our fathers, and only our fathers. The rest of you can bog off.”
