East Devon leader Paul Arnott writes about upcoming elections
March has arrived, a hint of Spring is in the air, and it’s County Council election season.
The last ones were in 2021, and although the Conservatives at Devon County tried to cancel those due on May 1st 2025, on some feeble pretexts about proposals to reorganise councils, the government didn’t allow them.
Ironically, many of those Conservatives shooting their hands up at the Devon County meeting in January to cancel the May 1st elections – giving themselves a bonus year, possibly two – will be pleading for your votes in May. In Exmouth, Sidmouth, Honiton, Whimple and the Blackdown Hills, they’ll be putting leaflets through your doors for the very election they wanted to scratch from the fixture list.
It’s not great, is it? It could be ventured that even Trump would hesitate at that, but let’s face it, he’d leap at the chance.
Cynical self-interested ploys like these do so much to harm local and national faith in politicians. This creates a void which Putin apologist Nigel Farage fills with his dodgy anti-migrant offer.
Reform has had a terrible week. Farage needed to condemn Trump for bullying Ukraine’s President Zelensky. Instead, he puffed that Zelensky should have worn a suit and is repeating the canard that Zelensky is dodging his electorate.
Well, while Devon’s Conservative excuses to try and swerve the county election were wafer-thin, most might say that, as we did in World War Two, Zelensky can be forgiven for holding on. Russian missiles are raining down on his country much of which Putin illegally occupies.
Farage is now walking a tightrope between two “strong leaders/men”. Trump is holding one end and Putin the other. What could possibly go wrong?
Meanwhile, at East Devon District Council last week we passed a motion to demand that Devon County Council get its act together about highways, and holes in the road in particular. During the debate, one councillor asked how many of us had punctures this year caused by a crater in the road and a fifth of our hands, including mine, shot up.
But with roads, you can tell its election time here too. Suddenly, chasms in the tarmac are being filled, the most visible ones anyway, some even by Conservative candidates in hi-vis jackets.
This comedy spectacle happens every four years as county elections loom, often absurdly. There has been a bit of welcome patching here in Colyton, but electrical contractors are going to dig Dolphin Street back up a fortnight after the elections!
The other comedy tradition honoured by Conservative candidates recently is them posing with outsized cheques (paid for by your money through their localities funding) for local organisations. Their purses and wallets have been clutched tight for three years, but all of a sudden with votes up for grabs they can’t wait to splash our cash.
If the last few weeks have taught us anything, it is about how precious it is to honour democracy. Don’t try to cancel elections, or play with tarmac when you’ve failed. Democracy for all its flaws is a precious freedom; it needs protection not cynicism.
East Devon Watch 