The Greasy Poll - Diary of a Controversial Election

This book is by turns funny, thrilling and terrifying. It's the day-by-day story of idealism as it meets political reality in a Wales with a dishonest media and craven politicians. Mike Parker's colonoscopy of Welsh politics will make you laugh, and it may make you angry, but above all it will make you want to change things. --Patrick McGuinness, Oxford professor, Booker longlisted author (for The Last Hundred Days) and poet

A diary of an unsuccessful election campaign does not immediately strike one as compulsive reading, but when the diary belongs to Mike Parker, that is what it definitely is. An honest, no holds barred account of the Plaid Cymru candidate's attempt to become the MP for Ceredigion in 2015, it draws us into the roller-coaster experience of a General Election campaign in this unique constituency. When I heard that Mike had been chosen as Plaid's candidate in Ceredigion, I knew he would face some problems. He was not only from outside the county, but was from Kidderminster, had outspoken left-field radical views, was gay and wait for it sported an ear-ring. At the same time, I was elated at the news because I knew he would bring something different to Plaid s cause. The fact that Mike is English born, and has learnt Welsh as a second language gives him a refreshingly different perspective on Wales and its people, but it also means that he does not suffer from the sensitivities which, for instance, tends to hold us natives back from being too open and honest about each other. So Mike sails through this lively campaign diary, naming names, and telling it as it is, warts and all. It is all done with good humour and delightful candour, but no-one is spared from criticism if deserved, friend or foe. It all amounts to a very enjoyable read which throws a new light on many aspects of present-day Welsh and British politics, and the way the press and media deal with it, and the author has some pertinent things to say about Plaid Cymru itself. It certainly rings true to me, and reminds me why I find politics so irresistible and so frustrating. --Dafydd Iwan, musician, former Gwynedd councillor and President of Plaid Cymru, 2003 10.

This is a compelling, readable account of one candidate's 2015 general election. Mike Parker s account is searingly honest, most of all about his own shortcomings as a would-be politician. Having become Plaid Cymru candidate for the target seat of Ceredigion in 2015, Mike Parker might have thought that his greatest concern would be his opponents from the other parties. Actually, they seem to have been almost the least of his problems, when compared with the strain on his personal life through two long years of campaigning; managing his own local party and its activists; and the vitriol directed against him as the result of a particularly nasty smear by the local newspaper. The Greasy Poll is not likely to make many people want to put themselves forwards as political candidates. And Mike Parker's experience raises particularly troubling questions about whether people who have tried to think and write seriously about society's problems can actually step into the realms of electoral politics, without having their previous words distorted out of all recognition and used against them. This is a very entertaining book, about a very interesting election. But it is not always a very comfortable read. --Roger Scully, Professor of Political Science in the Wales Governance Centre at Cardiff University