Our farmers weren’t quite marching with pitchforks into Hunsbury Hill the other night, but they certainly planned some difficult questions to skewer the five surviving men hoping to police Northamptonshire’s countryside from next month.
But it was lucky anything happened at all after a tricky stand-off between the NFU and the county’s branch of Neighbourhood Watch, who had also booked a hustings at the same time on Monday. “What to do, what to do?” fretted the Famous Five. Will it be Wellingborough, will it be Hunsbury? As it turned out, our heroes trooped in to face the NFU crowd and take questions on “fly-grazing” where, er, strangers allow horses to graze. But on someone else’s land.
The Wellingborough hustings, meanwhile, had been something of an addendum to the group’s AGM, the plan being for the candidates to make speeches and then depart into the night.
So when the NFU gig wrapped up, two of the candidates – independent John Norrie and Lib Dem Paul Varnsverry – rushed off to wow the Neighbourhood Watch (and tweet gleefully later that they had done a double hustings while the remainder, including Tory Adam Simmonds and UKIP’s Jim MacARTHUR, hob-nobbed with the farmers). Still we applaud them all for handing over £5,000 apiece and getting the 100 signatures needed to mount a challenge. Which is further than either the English Democrat (whose double-barrelled name escapes us, mostly due to lack of engagement with the media) or the entrepreneur Matt Stockdale, managed. Regards Mr Stockdale, we wish him very well with his campaign on space weather, which apparently “poses the biggest threat to mankind”.
PS: The frosty relationship between Adam and Jim shows no sign of thawing. Especially after the young (35) whipper-snapper Tory suggested to the NFU gathering that his UKIP rival might be a 70-year-old, an outrageous slur that Jim was on to with the speed of the former SAS warrior and aikido champ he once was. Jim is, after all, a mere 69 years young.
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