Harry Cole of Guy Fawkes’ blog has a quote from anti-green journalist James Delingpole, announcing his withdrawal from the Corby by-election:
What would be the point? John Hayes has just gone and made my every dream come true. I’m overjoyed. In fact, I think I may well have run the most stunningly successful election campaign in the history of elections.
Delingpole, of course, was running as an anti-wind-farm candidate in a constituency without any wind farms. Since Corby still has no wind farms, in a way he has been astonishingly successful, and will doubtless soon be attempting to sell residents of the arctic circle magic amulets which keep away lions – works 100% of the time!
It was always unclear whether Delingpole was running in Corby on local issues or in an attempt to make his voice heard nationally (beyond his already considerable platform as a Telegraph columnist). There are ongoing tussles in Corby around an application to build a wind farm, but since that application hasn’t been dropped, it seems Delingpole was just using the by-election as a megaphone, and didn’t really care about the situation in Corby at all. Fancy that.
Delingpole cited the anti-wind-farm rhetoric of DECC minister John Hayes, but since Delingpole gave Cole his statement, the DECC secretary of state (Liberal Democrat Ed Davey, who outranks the Conservative minister) has contradicted Hayes. Will Delingpole re-enter the race?
That seems unlikely. As Tim Fenton points out:
Delingpole has withdrawn just before the deadline for submitting nomination papers, which is 1600 hours today (pdf). So he doesn’t have to stump up a £500 deposit, but gets his free publicity. The Fawkes blog item is spin of the most blatant kind: the real story is that James Delingpole never intended to submit himself to the electorate of Corby and East Northamptonshire.
It would be wonderful to know what Delingpole was planning to give as his reason for pulling out before Hayes’ comments gave him a convenient excuse. Now, we never shall.
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