Paul Routledge - Rattling the bars

IT WAS a scene familiar from 1,000 televised election counts. Only the familiar, rotund figure of the late Vincent Hanna was missing. But this was the first time I had been personally involved.

We gathered for the results of the Craven District Council elections in the faintly baroque surroundings of Skipton Town Hall, crammed with trestle tables and middle-aged ladies laboriously licking their fingers and checking voting slips. The big black box for my village – naturally, on this day of days, number 13 – came up last.

I was surprised at the volume of paper that tumbled out. It seemed like the whole village, pop approximately 1,500, had voted. Appearances are deceptive. The turnout was 37.7 per cent, which was respectable and certainly not as low as some of the “urban” shows in Skipton, but lower than the high 40s elsewhere. In Grassington, Wharfedale, it topped 52 per cent, with no Boris Johnson in sight, although David Cameron’s man did get in.

My Tory rival, Ady Green (who drives around in a soft-top Mercedes with the number plate A1 DY), and I were allowed to sit at the counting table. He dressed down in open-neck and short sleeves. I thought it only right to wear the bright red knitted tie given to me by the recently-deceased former Labour Weekly man, John Rawlings, of Littondale. Some appearances should not be deceptive.

A council official, clearly enjoying his day of power, ordered us to keep our hands off the table. Did he think I had a secret stash of fake ballot papers in my coat pocket? This is Skipton, not Sligo. And where do you put your hands? In your pockets? Suspicious. On your knees? Looks a bit like prayer. And don’t talk to the Labour agent, party chair Duncan Hall, because it might put the ladies off their count. Indeed, it once did. My joke that Robert Mugabe had taken Barden Fell fell flat.

Just as I was thinking I would have been better off staying at home – the journey is an excruciating two-bus affair, taking well over an hour to do seven miles – the ballot papers were gathered up, wrapped in elastic bands and carted over to the returning officer. He switched on his mike (superfluous in the echoing confines of t’great hall) and announced the results as if this was the by-election that broke the Government. Still, every “I, the returning officer” has to have his day.

The outcome was mostly predictable. None of our five candidates – the largest number this century – won, but no one was utterly humiliated. Ted Saunders, the Giggleswick bookseller, picked up 178 in Settle and Ribblebanks, beating the bloody Tory into third place. Bob Holland, a former city councillor when he lived in Coventry, managed 177 in Aire Valley with Lothersdale.

Duncan Hall came a decent third in Skipton South, with 163 votes. I must say he took with great forbearance the embarrassing fact that one of his politics students, Sophie Gott, standing for the Tories, came in ahead of him with 222 votes. I imagine he will have to bear some ribbing in class over that. Christine Rose pulled in 113 votes in Skipton East. Unfortunately, this probably helped put in a Conservative, who gained the seat from the Liberal Democrats. But that’s politics. You can’t stand – or not stand – on the basis of what it might do for the Tories. You have to stand for what you believe in.

And how did I do? The Tory got in, by 470 votes to my 206. Nothing to be too ashamed of – at 30 per cent of the votes cast, rather better than Labour’s national average. It was the highest vote of all five of us, although, as was quickly pointed out, I had no Lib Dem to contend with. Not many of them, up ’ere. At least we flew the flag, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that more than 200 Cowineeaders (as the folk of Cowling are traditionally known) would support a Labour candidate at perhaps the lowest ebb in popularity of Gordon Brown’s Government. Maybe there are still grounds for hope.

So there you are. My first foray into local politics – and quite possibly my last. The bureaucracy surrounding this business is absurd. The guide to candidates is almost as thick as a Budget red book and the rigmarole allowing you to use Labour’s red rose is pointlessly officious. Filling out the nomination forms is worse than composing a raft of emails to people you don’t know: every dot and comma counts. Get one wrong and the whole shebang bounces back.

I don’t believe that democracy needs to be quite so complicated, especially at local level. There may be dangers from postal voting, but not half as subversive as the idiot red tape governing local democracy.