Diary of a political nobody
It’s the ultimate poacher turned gamekeeper tale: A journalist standing for election to his local council. Here’s his wry and witty account of his one-man campaign
FROM dealing with complaints about the height of Mr McNally’s leylandii to holding the parish powers-that-be to account, the local councillor can prove a community champion or turn out to be a constitutional chump. On Thursday, Scots voters get the chance to elect their councillors for the next five years in the local government elections. It is the grimy grass roots of politics, and the battle for a ‘seat on the cooncil’ attracts its fair share of do-gooders, zealots, nosey parkers and the downright eccentric. Others simply want the chance to dip their toe into the political shark pool. Here, in a hilarious diary, journalist-turned-politician PAUL DRURY tells of his long, weary days pounding the streets – and dodging the odd snarling dog – in pursuit of democracy...
MARCH 7:
THIS is where it all begins. I find myself getting angrier by the day at the secrecy of my local council, which, I discover, has been engaged in talks with a housing developer over a controversial parcel of green belt land near my home.
For years, because of my work as a journalist, I have been a thorn in the side of the council by exposing issues they would rather keep quiet. Call it nimbyism if you like, but this latest hushed-up ‘scandal’ right on my doorstep is the final straw. I decide the only way to beat ’em is to join ’em. Working from inside the council will give me a fighting chance to stop the development.
I savour the jaw-dropping moment when I attend a ‘briefing meeting’ for council candidates. One asks if I’m there to cover the meeting as a journalist? ‘No,’ I reply, ‘I’m thinking of standing as a councillor.’ You could hear a pin drop!
MARCH 14:
AM I doing the right thing? I’m still mulling over whether to put my name forward as a candidate when I meet a friend for a pint in my local pub. Chatting away, I hear four elderly customers discussing rumours over the proposal to build a huge housing development at the old Braidbar Quarry.
I find myself leaping into action. ‘I couldn’t help overhear you talking about the Quarry,’ I say. ‘I’m standing as an Independent candidate to stop the dev...’ Did I really say that? Seems the old boys’ anxiety has made up my mind for me – I’m going to give it a shot.
I’m going to stand to try to become one of three councillors elected to the Giffnock and Thornliebank ward of East Renfrewshire Council. Scary.
MARCH 21:
I’VE got a meeting with Eamonn Daly, the nice deputy returning officer at the council. I say ‘nice’ because he’ll be counting the votes on May 5. I’ve got to submit my candidate nomination papers to make my bid for power official.
I’ve been acting as a human handbrake to the local authority for years, pulling them up for any excess or malpractice I could find out about. I know they can’t possibly like me but is that the sound of hissing I can hear from council officials as Mr Daly and I walk along the corridors of power?
MARCH 29:
WITH perfect timing, the answer to my latest Freedom of Information request to the council arrives on my desk – and it’s dynamite.
It shows the council HAVE been in private talks with a developer who wants to build 400 houses on controversial Braidbar Quarry and use the popular Huntly Park as a giant drain for all the extra buildings. There’s a spring in my step as I immediately make plans to tell as many people as possible.
APRIL 6:
RESULT! A national newspaper prints my story about the housing development plan and it also makes the front page of our local paper.
My friend Peter, a social media whizz, promises he can attract thousands to a special election Facebook page he wants to set up for me.
Really? It sounds like witchcraft to me but I tell him to go ahead anyway.
APRIL 7:
APOLOGISE to my sister, Jacqueline, for forgetting to send a birthday card. Family life is beginning to suffer a bit as I throw myself into endless hours of leafleting and campaigning.
On one street, my spirits are raised by the sign outside one couple’s door: ‘A Lovely Lady and a Grumpy Old Man Live Here.’ Delivering thousands of pamphlets through letterboxes allows you to see homes up close. I make a mental note of the jobs I really should get round to at my own house after the election. I’m beginning to see Farrow and Ball-painted front doors in my sleep.
APRIL 12:
POLITICAL sabotage is under way, I’m sure of it. My campaign posters have disappeared from the entrance to my local, the Orchard Park Hotel, whose owner, Chris, had kindly agreed to put up my picture. (He’s obviously not worried about scaring away customers.)
Then I discover Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson had been in earlier for a photo-opportunity pulling pints behind the bar. Surely Ruth wouldn’t have stooped so low as to pull down a rival’s poster from the wall. Or could a scurrilous spin doctor have done the dark deed for her?
The country needs to know, Ruth! In my mind, I play with headlines. How does ‘Postergate’ sound?
APRIL 13:
IT’S alchemy, I tell you! That Facebook ‘Save Huntly Park’ page Peter set up has reached 12,500 people. If I convert a tenth of this social media ‘traffic’ to voters on May 4, I’ll get elected. How exciting.
As a result of the page going live, I get a ‘friend’ request from Caroline, a girl who bought our house way back in 1989. No wonder the SNP did so well in the last Holyrood elections. Their mastery of the web went a long way to winning them power. I’m hoping it works for me – even although I don’t fully understand it.
APRIL 14:
CLOSE shave with a collie. I’m quickly learning that dogs are an occupational hazard. It sees me through the glass front door as I bend to slip a pamphlet through the letterbox. Crash! The mutt breaks the British land speed record to throw itself at the door, ending up splayed ‘paws akimbo’ like Garfield.
I retreat, thanking my lucky stars for
double glazing. Later, great excitement as my wife’s ballot paper arrives to allow her to make a postal vote. Pauline jokes that she won’t be voting for me. At least I think she was joking...
APRIL 15:
ONE encounter in a Giffnock tenement sends my mind racing back 47 years to the last time I delivered leaflets for a Scottish council election.
I was 12 and had been roped into backing the campaign for John McQueenie, the legendary Labour figure in Glasgow’s City Chambers. His patch was the Calton ward in the city’s East End, with dark Dickensian tenements smelling of cats.
I am reminded of them in Giffnock’s Fenwick Road, where someone has kindly left a bottle of cologne on the tenement landing to allow visitors to refresh themselves. That’s middle-class suburbia for you.
One of the last leaflets of the day is delivered to my namesake in Park Road. For years, I have selfishly allowed the other Paul Drury to take nasty phone calls from dodgy businessmen who didn’t like my journalistic investigations. (I’m ex-directory).
He says he’s a Labour Party member but won’t be voting for them this time around because he doesn’t like Jeremy Corbyn. Paul Drury makes my day by revealing he’s voting… for Paul Drury!
APRIL 18:
THERESA May spoils my day by calling a snap General Election for five weeks after the council vote. Surely, consideration over constitutional change can’t trump local anxiety over bin collection days?
An aunt from Wales lightens things by calling after the Downing Street announcement to say she will vote for me. Bless her, I didn’t have the heart to tell her.
APRIL 19:
I’M informed by the council election staff that it has one of the biggest postal vote tallies in Scotland – an incredible 15,000 people, or 20 per cent of the voting public. It used to be that you needed to prove you would be away on polling day. Not now. Anyone can get one and it makes me realise that – yikes – voting is already under way.
APRIL 20:
RINGING more doorbells in the hope my leafleting campaign has struck a chord with the voters. One elderly neighbour tells me she has ‘good and bad news’ on the election front for me.
‘Yes, I voted for you,’ she said, waving her postal vote. So what’s the ‘bad’ news? She replied: ‘I gave you an X, instead of a 1.’ Oops!
This election’s being decided on a Single Transferable Vote basis, where you indicate your choice through the use of numbers –1, 2, 3. This is causing some confusion, particularly to older voters.
The council boasts a number of centenarians among the electorate, so I hope they don’t get mixed up with the section requiring their date of birth – otherwise I’ll get ‘1917’ in the box next to my name.
APRIL 21:
THIS election lark sure takes it out of you. My family has already been embarrassed into replacing the white(ish) Nike trainers I bought in an out-of-town shopping mall during our Florida holiday in 1996. I try to limit myself to 90-minute bursts of activity round the doors.
I interrupt a dad playing football with his boy on a nice AstroTurf pitch at the side of their house. The chap says he had received his postal vote that very day and told me he knew nothing about any of the nine candidates on the list.
‘OK, you get my vote just for coming to my door. Now what are your politics? he says. Our deep political discussion gets nowhere as the youngster keeps booting the ball at the back of his father’s head, anxious to get on with the game. Oh well, it’s a vote in the bag. I’ll take it.
I get home exhausted. Election rules state that every penny a candidate spends on their campaign has to be recorded. I’m considering adding boxes of Radox and my hot water bills to my spending record. My 59-year-old legs have required so many soothing baths, I think I may already have spent a huge portion of my £1,500 limit just heating the water.
APRIL 23:
IT’S a quiet Sunday morning but there’s a noisy event taking place in the middle of the day which – temporarily – brings electioneering to a standstill. Celtic and Rangers are kicking off at noon in the semi-final of the Scottish Cup and I invoke a self-imposed moratorium on campaigning for 90 minutes.
Heaven help the innocent candidate who knocks on a door while the match is on. I chuckle at the thought of my Tory rival pitching up at the home of a Celtic-mad family, sporting his lovely blue rosette.
Talking of colours, I’ve opted for black-and-white for my campaign – and it’s not because I’m a Queen’s Park supporter.
APRIL 24:
TEN days to voting and I have a complete obsession with politics to the exclusion of everything else. Best not to discuss what happens during my dream involving Margaret Thatcher.
The white picket fence at Giffnock Station no longer resembles a railing – it’s a potential public display for a giant ‘Vote Drury’ poster. So-called council ‘street furniture’ is out of bounds for use as political vehicles but every other space is jealously coveted for its potential projection purposes.
Dogs in the street speed up as I eye them up as a mobile advertisement. Come on, would pinning on a rosette hurt so much?
APRIL 29:
TONIGHT, we’re filming a couple of Facebook videos for neighbours to share their reasons for voting for me next week.
I’ve been humbled by the support I’ve had from friends and family, who realise that if I’m to beat a political party I have to replicate the election machinery a political party can muster.
Being self-employed, I’ve been able to re-schedule my work to accommodate my dip into the political pool. But now that a win looks tantalisingly close, I realise what a big responsibility I’m taking on.
The backing from one newspaper’s picture desk is touching. They say they’re keeping my picture on file for the first time Councillor Paul Drury is prosecuted over his expenses.
I’m sure that must be politically incorrect.