From a correspondent:

“Hugo Swire manages to mix a tiny bit of truth with some outright misinformation when he says, “There is no doubt that Claire Wright and the EDA are one and the same – I don’t know how they manage to say they are independent when it is a registered party.”

Firstly, the East Devon Alliance is NOT a party in the usual sense – they needed to register with the Electoral Commission in order to get a shared group name on the ballot paper. This has been stated on the home-page of their web site for several months, so Hugo has no excuse for being misleading about it (which by the way is against the rules set by the Electoral Commission who require candidates to be completely factual).

It is also wrong to associate Claire Wright with the East Devon Alliance – again their home page makes it clear that their registration with the Electoral Commission is only for local government and not central government elections. Indeed a quick search for Claire Wright on the EDA website shows only two mentions which are not in quotes from the press – where she endorses the EDA candidates standing to replace her as Councillor in Ottery Rural, and pictured with their candidate for Budleigh, Les Cotton. So, by failing to check his facts before opening his mouth, Hugo has misled again.

That said, there is obviously some common ground between Claire Wright and the EDA. Each are standing as Independents. Each believes in open and transparent local government, each are fearless in exposing the secrecy and poor quality decisions made by the Conservative leadership at EDDC, a leadership which Hugh Swire has himself criticised for their plans to relocate from the Knowle, originally to Skypark, and now to Honiton and Exmouth.

But the most obvious similarity between Claire Wright and the EDA is that they are both looking very electable, and that the local Conservative party is both so scared of losing and so lacking in their own policies for East Devon that they are panicked into making wild accusations which are easily provable as totally wrong. Shame on them!”