By Isle of Wight Observer
One election candidate already knows he will not be waking up as a new councillor on May 8 – or at least he would, if he were a candidate at all.
Nick Binfield had been preparing to stand for the Conservatives in Brading & St Helens, working the patch since at least February last year.
He joined Brading Town Council, spent months speaking with residents and helping where he could, and – unlike several candidates this year – had his nomination papers completed early. He handed them to the Conservative Association on March 25, more than two weeks before the deadline, and was looking forward to the chance to challenge sitting councillor, Jonathan Bacon.
But on Friday, when the official list of candidates was published, Nick’s name was nowhere to be seen. Confused, he contacted Conservative Group leader Cllr Ed Blake to find out what had gone wrong. After an investigation, he was told the papers had been taken for checking and then, inexplicably, left in the Conservative Group room – never submitted to County Hall.
The red‑faced chairman of the association, Tim Jeffreys, acknowledged the error. “Nick has been working so hard and we believe he had a good chance of winning,” he said. “By the time we realised his papers had not been submitted, it was too late to do anything about it.”
Nick has taken the news with surprising grace, despite knowing that all those months of work have come to nothing. He thanked residents for their support and said: “I will continue to work for the betterment of this part of our fantastic community, whether or not I have the privilege of representing it at County Hall.”
And so, after all the preparation, Nick Binfield will be spending election night like the rest of us – watching the results come in, rather than waiting for his own.
Mal Butler