Cheap Suits & Bright Lights

Ben Wildsmith

Caerphilly Leisure Centre, lovely as it is, doesn’t exude the glamour you associate with big-time politics.

At no point last night did I expect to encounter the ghost of Lloyd George or Martin Sheen reprising his role in the West Wing. There were A4 sheets of paper Blu-tacked to the walls with instructions like ‘run on the spot’, run round the gym’, and ‘sit down’. The basketball court lighting was too harsh to allow for discretion, let alone intrigue.

The night’s emotions were illuminated on the faces of all in the room with searching clarity.

Reform UK’s presence at the count was as conspicuous as it was novel. Their large contingent of observers bustled around at pace: all clipboards, frowns, and zeitgeisty vim.

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Reservoir Dogs

Curiously, they all seemed to be wearing identical dark grey suits. Their rosettes and ties suggested they were auditioning for the role of Mr. Turquoise in a sequel to Reservoir Dogs. The jokers to the right, however, weren’t the only visual entertainment on offer.

Labour’s volunteers were a study in visible distress. Professional and engaged in their tasks, they busied themselves around the gym as if their future prospects weren’t being doused in petrol before their eyes.

Putting in some legwork for the Labour Party has been a sound career move for motivated youngsters since Keir Hardie’s time around here. I mean, what could go wrong?

Plaid Cymru’s Lindsay Whittle was artlessly excited. He told me so when I took advantage of his approachable nature and asked how he was feeling.

‘Very excited, very enthusiastic.’

In his red jacket and deck shoes, he circulated amongst the observers, eyeing the votes mounting up with nervy intensity. A lifetime of Caerphilly politics was coming to the boil at last.

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Straight-backed

Reform’s Head of Policy, Zia Yusuf, arrived early to give a series of straight-backed TV interviews in a dark grey suit of somewhat finer manufacture than those of his minions.

Even the likely inheritor of King Nigel’s political empire has to go for a piss sometimes, I thought when he exited at speed after about fifteen minutes. We didn’t see him again, nor Farage, or Richard Tice or Lee Anderson, or that darts bloke.

Caerphilly’s allure, at an all-time high last week, seemed to be fading for the top echelons of how-dare-you-call-me-far-right-politics. Llŷr Powell, the candidate, arrived long after Yusuf’s exit and initially stood awkwardly on his own, seeming unsure as to where to put himself. The TV cameras finally found him, and he looked glad of the company.

By now, the Reform suits had been joined by Laura Anne Jones MS, whose permanent smile had a long night ahead of it. It was a lonely night too, as by midnight the men at C&A had faces like half a tin of condemned veal.

The haughty briskness that had distinguished them at the start of proceedings was giving way to slouching truculence as the ballot papers piled up.

Labour’s Huw Irranca-Davies, meanwhile, was giving what may well be the very last performance of a branch of entertainment that has been popular in South Wales for over a century. Drawing on the easy confidence of being a leading figure in an unassailably successful political party, Irranca-Davies twinkled through his interviews with Clintonesque assuredness.

The source of that brio, however, was evaporating into the chilly October night.

The Labour volunteers sat behind him along the wall, huddled together against the wretchedness of it all. If Irranca-Davies’s savoir faire lent him an air of invulnerability, their stricken expressions told the true story.

And that distinction between dissembling performance and fallible authenticity is, I think, what counted yesterday. Lindsay Whittle is demonstrably of Caerphilly and the glow of community around him shone more persuasively than the flash bulbs around Nigel Farage and his Welsh placeman.

Glow

In South Wales that glow once belonged to Labour, and Labour alone. A latecomer to the count, Alex Barros-Curtis, stood impassively as the result was read. As Whittle babbled his joyful thanks, the Cardiff West MP navigated the moment with a smile of Confucian inscrutability. One day, that can seem like professionalism, the next it betrays a deficit of passion.

History was made and Wales will likely never return to its familiar political patterns.

It’s Labour who changed, though, not us. The Welsh electorate, it seems, still believes in decency, modesty, honesty, and compassion. We can spot a cheap suit when we see one.