Confusion over Colwyn Bay Conservatives' posters

Mar 11 2010 by Richard Evans, North Wales Weekly News

VOTERS were left confused in Colwyn Bay after the Conservatives put up posters for Guto Bebb, their Conwy candidate, and not those for Clwyd West MP David Jones.

The confused campaign meant Mr Bebb’s name was plastered over empty shop windows in the town centre – instead of MP Mr Jones.

The posters were placed in several vacant properties being let by the St David’s Commercial estate agent.

Pensioner David Williams was shopping on Colwyn Bay’s Penrhyn Road and was confused by seeing Conservative candidate Guto Bebb’s name on shops in the wrong constituency.

“I had to look twice, it’s pretty bad isn’t it? If the politicians don’t know where the constituency boundaries are, how do they expect us to?” he said.

“A lot of people who don’t know about politics get confused anyway around election time. I would have liked to be a fly on the wall when David Jones saw Guto Bebb’s name plastered all over the main town in his jurisdiction. It’s quite humorous really and it can’t have done David Jones’ campaign any good at all.”

However Guto Bebb instead claimed it was a simple mistake which wouldn’t have made any difference to his fellow Tory’s election chances.

“We had a very enthusiastic gentleman who wanted to put posters up all over the constituency, he collected some posters from us and wanted to put them up in his empty premises and wasn’t aware of the boundary. If you talk to 90% of people in the area they wouldn’t be able to tell you where the boundary was,” he said.

“But they’ve been taken down, and it just goes to show you the enthusiasm for the Conservatives, we all had a bit of a laugh about it. “But I don’t think it has done David any harm, I was speaking to him on Saturday, he is very high profile in Clwyd-West and is certain to win anyway.”

Clwyd-West MP David Jones also made light of the situation: “The lads in question didn’t realise where the boundary is, but they’ve been taken down now anyway.

“It is just a bit of fun, there is no such thing as bad publicity at an election, the fact that you are writing about Guto and myself puts our names in the paper-so I’m quite happy. To be fair they were just trying to be helpful but made a Horlicks of it.”