Winston McKenzie: the English Democrats’ candidate to replace David Cameron as an MP
The English Democrats must be embarrassed that they have chosen serial political loser Winston McKenzie as their candidate for next month’s by-election in Witney, David Cameron’s former parliamentary seat.
Because two days after this somewhat eccentric decision was announced at the party’s annual conference at the Leicester Hilton, they haven’t bothered to get round to publishing anything about their candidate choice on their own website.
And if they can’t be bothered…
McKenzie, “the Chump from the Dump”, a frequent visitor to Elis David Almshouses in Waddon, is the politician who it seems that few want to have in their party, and fewer still want to vote for.
A former member of six other political parties, as well as standing repeatedly as an independent, McKenzie joined the English Democrats earlier this year shortly after he quit UKIP.
McKenzie, the man who used to call Nigel Farage “The Boss”, opted to leave UKIP when they were conducting an investigation into his handling of local party contributions. At the time, McKenzie gave as his reason for leaving that, after several years’ membership, he’d just realised that some of UKIP’s members might be racists.
McKenzie appears unaware that he has joined a party with links to the EDL.
Indeed, the English Democrats have such a poor grasp of common decency that on the same day as the Witney by-election, they will also be fielding a candidate in the Spen and Batley by-election, which was called after the murder of MP Jo Cox. Most other serious political parties decided, out of respect for Cox, not to contest the by-election against Labour.
If McKenzie has been chosen by the English Democrats as their candidate, it ought to make anyone wonder quite what the calibre of their other candidates was like.
Even in the short time he has been associated with the English Democrats, McKenzie’s been a bit of a disaster. A fund-raising appearance on Celebrity Big Brother saw him evicted at the first opportunity when his homophobic bigotry was exposed.
And when the English Democrats nominated him as their candidate for Mayor of London earlier this year, McKenzie failed to fill in his application forms properly or raise close to his target funds to pay his candidacy fees and run a campaign.
The last time McKenzie stood for election, for the English Democrats in the West Thornton ward council by-election in Croydon in May, he garnered a grand total of 70 votes, finishing seventh, and last of all the candidates.
McKenzie is the failed boxer, failed pub owner, failed youth sports organiser and serially failed politician. He once described Croydon as a “dump” to every news network in the country, when he was seeking election in … Croydon.
McKenzie has never held elected office. It’s not hard to understand why.
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There are many things that are just not worth the bother of reporting or reading. This is one.
It’s always worth reading about winston. I thought I’d heard the last from him but he is still trying to get elected somewhere. It’s astonishing that any political party could ever take him seriously. He is crass beyond belief, a political joke but without the humour of the monster raving looney party.
Having just returned from a week in Spain, where politics is a serious business, and where “Spanish Practices” involving money are (one hopes) in a different league from ours, the sight in the above “Inside Croydon” report, of Winston and Georgeous Gorge Galloway in action, have brought a smile to my holiday-tanned face.
Who needs the Monster Raving Loony party, when Winston and George stride the UK political stage, role models for us all, and at the forefront of our democratic system?