Minutes after sitting down with council election winner Peter May, I found myself increasingly pulled into the off-beat world of the Uplands Party leader. Restaurant-bar Verve 37 happened to be the venue in which I was transported to Cllr May's apolitical Narnia, where national politics has no place and new possibilities seem to open up. Slightly madcap quotes appeared in shorthand in my notebook, and time flew by.
The next morning Cllr May sent me YouTube videos of the some of the work achieved by the party - named after the Swansea ward it represents - complete with jaunty soundtracks. A speeded-up one of him clearing a road drain with The Good Life theme tune playing particularly caught my eye. No, it wasn't all a dream. Unlike CS Lewis's fictional Narnia, Cllr May's Uplands Party is very much real. It is unashamedly pro-Uplands. National politics is given a wide berth.
Officially registered with the Electoral Commission in 2016, the party gained two of Uplands's four seats in the 2017 council elections and then completed a clean sweep at last Friday's count in the city's Guildhall, snatching the other two seats from Labour. I imagine a grin emanating from Cllr May, who won't have forgotten Swansea Labour leader Rob Stewart's description of the Uplands Party in a budget speech a couple of years ago, with a hint of sarcasm, as "that great force in British politics".
