We would be grateful if you would allow us to propose that two key lessons must be learned.

The first, sadly, is negative. After the 2012 P&CC when the turnout here was 15 per cent, the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) said: “From the start, the P&CC elections were marred by controversy, with the government shirking its responsibility to provide voters with even the most basic information that the elections were taking place.” One of the ERS’s three key recommendations was: “Never leave voters in the dark about who or what they are voting for – ensure information on candidates is provided in mailings to voters.”

Cut forward to last week, and in Devon and Cornwall the 2016 turnout was still a lowly 22.8 per cent, artificially boosted by elections held on the same day in the major settlements of Exeter and Plymouth. We consider it has greatly damaged the reputation of the Cabinet Office (that little understood organ of control at Downing Street’s right hand) that they simply refused in the four years since 2012 to implement the ERA’s urgent suggestion for even a single mailshot, and hundreds of thousands of West Country voters remained in the dark in May 2016. Why?

However, on a more hopeful theme, there is in our view an immense positive to be found.

The Conservatives polled roughly 69,000 and Labour roughly 66,000.

But the aggregate vote of the two Independent candidates (Devon’s Bob Spencer taking about 41,000 and Cornwall’s William Morris about 22,000) shows us that even at an election when the party machines were cranking hard, a similar share could be gained by two Independent individuals working entirely from their own initiative, with slim resources, and having to operate across an immense area.

The country knows that we are stuck now with an increasingly divisive party political context until the general election fixed for May 2020. However, the more extreme parts of the Conservative agenda – from academies to planning, junior doctors to refugees – are being repeatedly confronted now by collective independent voices uniting outside the parliamentary system.

Last week, in our part of the country, the South West showed that even on a low turnout, the Independent cause is more than about just protest – we too can score in substantial numbers at the ballot box.

The question we now ask the region is this: how, for the sake of the next generation do we harness all this Independent goodwill and spirit to convert sentiment into candidates and candidates up to office at county elections in 2017 and for Parliament in 2020?

It seems to us that without an organised coming together of all independent-minded reformers as soon as possible, the Conservatives will ‘get the vote out’ in 2017 and 2020 too. Surely if ever there was a time for the Independent-minded to take up the challenge, it is now.

Paul Arnott, Chairman
Ben Ingham, Leader
East Devon Alliance”