Following the candidacy of Kate Lord Brennan who could almost stand under a none of the above banner in the West and still romp home we see that Liberal Vannin Chairman Paul Weatherall will now stand in Ayre.
Presumably he's standing on the same basis in that with two seats up for grabs any alternative to the destructive Professor Yaffle in Ayre and Michael is more than likely to get a good share of the vote and five years full employment in these straightened times. Whatever his motivation let's certainly hope that he beats the last Liberal Vannin Ayre candidate. This being the aptly named, and quite insane, Mr Pat Ayres who romped home with a staggering 39 votes in the same constituency in 2016. That's an impressive 0.7% of the vote (even five years later they still haven't found out which local family was responsible).
That might well be the worst Manx general election result in history, and hopefully sets no actual precedent for Liberal Vannin in Ayre, but we're guessing that after so many abysmal personal performances from existing members of Keys in the last five years that this election is perhaps going to start a trend in many constituencies for people standing on a general disillusionment platform just to ensure that many failed returning candidates simply don't get back in.
This loops back to our opening paragraph and as part of all this we are reminded of the None of The Above (NOTA) movement as has been historically deployed in places like Nevada and California - and which was exemplified in Richard Pryors election campaign in the 1985 film Brewsters Millions. Here disillusioned Monty Brewster fought a whole election campaign urging the public to vote for none of the above on the basis that every election candidate was dishonest and untrustworthy and even he was such an idiot that he clearly didn't deserve peoples votes.
But in Ayre there's just two seats amongst only 5,000 voters with a lot of expectation already behind Alf Cannan as a credible candidate for future Chief Minister and an utterly woeful glove-puppet Minister seeking re-election in the form of Tim Baker who even makes Monty Brewster look a safe vote. So whether you like Paul Weatherall, his manifesto, or indeed Liberal Vannin - please do consider that the alternative could well be five more years of Professor Yaffle!
