Local election promises
I got home this evening to find a leaflet from the Conservative party waiting for me, urging me to vote for them in the local elections. It says, amongst many other things:
If as the polls suggest the Conservative Council is re-elected, we believe Thornton Heath would be best served by having Conservative councillors ... rather than opposition councillors who have no influence
So I've emailed them to ask:
This is remarkably similar to something that Simon Burns MP said in one of his election leaflets years ago when I lived in Chelmsford. Strangely, despite (according to him, and now you) voters being best served by a representative who is a member of the party in power, he didn't immediately resign his seat when he won in 1997 but the Tories lost over-all. Will you promise to do what he should have done, stick to your guns, and, in the interests of Thornton Heath, resign if the Tories don't get a majority on the council?If not, why should I vote for you, seeing that you'd be effectively promising to represent me badly?
If they reply, I'll post their reply here. If they don't reply - well, you can interpret that however you like.
Overall, I find their promises for local government reasonable - at least those that they have any control over - although some of the headlines are predicated on a Tory win nationally as well. My biggest quibble is that they want to replace schools with "Academies". Why go to the extra expense instead of just fixing schools that aren't doing so well?