The Carpetbaggers, you may remember, is a best seller by Harold Robbins published in 1961, principally famous for its salacious sex content. This post won’t have any of that.
A carpetbagger was someone who relocated to exploit locals. It was coined after the American Civil War to describe Northerners who moved South to make money; it has never been used as a compliment. Over time it has taken on a more specific meaning to describe a political candidate seeking election in an area where they have no local connections.
There have always been a few carpetbaggers in British politics going back to the Rotten Boroughs and forward to George Galloway. GG has toted his carpetbag pretty impressively being elected as a Member of Parliament for Bradford, Bethnal Green and Bow and Glasgow; a record only exceeded by his four marriages. This week he is standing in the London mayoral election.
On Thursday this week in the UK there are elections all over the place. The main ones are for the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, Mayor of London, the London Assembly, councillors, police and crime commissioners (and probably beadles and dog catchers). None of these are being conducted like a UK General Election on the first past the post system. They operate on a variety of flavours of Proportional Representation, the most odious of which is a closed party list.
The closed party list is a delightful thing for a carpetbagger. Your party nominates you and the local electorate may vote for your party but does not vote for a candidate. UKIP have twenty candidates for the regional list in the Welsh election. The regional list is a closed party list. A lowly backbencher in the National Assembly of Wales will be paid £64,000 a year; catnip to a carpetbagger and there are at least three UKIP candidates in that category: Neil Hamilton, Mark Reckless and Nathan Gill.
There’s nowt so strange as British politics. The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) has just one MP in the House of Commons, but is has twenty-two MEPs (£79,000 a year plus expenses) and by the end of the week will have representation in the Welsh Assembly. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that UKIP candidates have become expert at using the closed party list electoral system to enrich themselves while doing diddly-squat for the electorate. Their own logo encapsulates this rather well.
Oh well, this is the Self Preservation Society.
The Bellew fact factory has stumbled. You can call Neil Hamilton many things but a carpet bagger in Wales he is not. Mostyn Neil Hamilton was born in 1949 in the pit village Fleur de Lis, Blackwood, Caerphilly. His father worked for the coal board and both grandfathers worked in the pits. He was educated at the local grammar, Ammanford and at Aberystywth University. Thereafter his life was a little more public.
I sat up very straight when I read just now that UKIP had twenty-two MEPs. I think that it might be two?
I did not know that Neil Hamilton is Welsh until John corrected me but I think there are, incredibly, twenty-two UKIP MEPs.
http://www.ukipmeps.org/mypage_5_UKIP-MEPs.html
I’m asleep on the job today. I now see that there are twenty -something UKIP MEPS!
Christopher I am surprised, shouldn’t the Northern Ireland Assembly election this Thursday also have been included amongst the “main ones”?
Yes it should. I am aware of it but forgot about it which was especially stupid as I had been thinking of writing about the D’Hondt system that is used in NI (and the Republic).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-politics-13359731
I believe the origin of the term “carpetbagger” came from the idea that the opportunistic profiteers hurried from the North to the South with all of their worldly possessions carried in a soft-sided bag (“carpet bag”). Not a single globe trotter case in sight.