You may remember I attended last July’s African Union summit in Uganda as part of the Southern Sudanese delegation. One incident was sufficiently odd that I really could not quite bring myself to blog about it at the time, but the time has now come. It was on the Sunday, and we were milling around the buffet tables beside Lake Victoria finding our lunch, when we became aware of a biggish crowd, focussed on a single individual, approaching us from the main meeting tent. It was not difficult to see who was at the centre of this group, and I got a couple of decent pictures as he came towards where we were standing, before he swept past us:
I do not know who he was talking to; presumably another head of state, but one who is less well known. NB that there was no sign of the rumoured bodyguard of trained Ukrainian superwomen, though we understood that he was making his way to his personal travel tent, pitched further along the bay behind us.
At the time my sense was that he was being treated by the African leaders as an eccentric but rich old uncle; the road from Entebbe to Kampala sported posters ostensibly from the people of Uganda thanking him for his generosity, but these were clearly paid for by the Libyan government as a publicity stunt. How rapidly things can change. I doubt that there will be many posters thanking him for his generosity in his future.
I don’t know, frankly. I am still baffled by the Rodney Connor failure in 2010, even after reading reminiscences from those involved. And Lutton’s performance also surprised me, though it is easier to explain.
But I must disagree with you that his was an “incredibly low key campaign”. UUP and DUP both took it pretty seriously, as far as I could tell, with senior figures coming through not just for photo-opps but for actual canvassing, and serious mobilisation of resources into the constituency. Not having been on the ground myself, I can’t judge the level of activity, but Lutton’s decision to campaign on the ground rather than appear on TV is, in retrospect, justified. He was not a candidate to attract the moderate swing voter, but there aren’t a lot of those in Mid Ulster anyway.
It must also be said that if SF voters had turned out proportionately, Lutton’s vote share would have been at or below the previous combined Unionist total rather than above. They didn’t, so it wasn’t, but that probably won’t be repeated.
As for FST, I’m predicting that the tactical squeeze on the SDLP will apply even more strongly rather than less so next time round; they no longer have a sitting MLA in the constituency. So getting five more votes than Rodney Connor is unlikely to be enough.