There will be no great fanfare when Dick Cole steps down as party leader in a few days’ time. We’ll go to the pub afterwards and have a few beers. I expect I’ll breathe a big sigh of relief.” Cole has been leader of Mebyon Kernow (MK), which campaigns to win greater self-government for Cornwall, for 29 years, which is thought to make him the UK’s current longest-serving political party leader.
Before he got the top job, he was press and campaigns officer. We’ve got quite a lot of new members coming through. We’ve got someone who’s keen to step up.
I don’t want to fret too much about something not ending in a zero.” Cole was chosen as party leader in 1997, the year Tony Blair became UK prime minister. He became a borough councillor two years later. He heard he won the seat on the radio while working on the remains of a Cornish engine house.
He now serves his home patch of St Dennis and St Enoder on Cornwall council. Cole is no power-crazed dictator or tub-thumping orator. We all work together as a team.
I’m not the kingpin and everything I say goes. It’s totally different from that. I’m not someone who thinks I’ve got the gift of the gab.
I don’t do the Blairite thing at all.” But he has worked hard, often 70 hours a week or more, keeping on top of his various jobs and roles. I’m there slogging away, doing my best, getting the messages out as best as I can. I think the role has been about persistence.” That persistence seems to have paid off.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
