Our local Conservative Party have excelled themselves in the field of historical fantasy recently, by claiming that we had promised not to increase council tax in our 2006 election campaign. Sadly they have a record of this sort of silliness. Here is my letter to the local paper in response.
Sir,
How disappointing to learn the Conservative Party in the borough have learned nothing from their four years running the council, nor from their heavy defeat in May 2006.
Once again they have taken to treating voters like idiots. No wonder voters booted them out at the first opportunity.
The pathetic attempt to re-write history by suggesting that the Liberal Democrats had promised to cut council tax, should, perhaps, not have come as surprise, but it is somewhat offensive to the residents of the borough that the local Tories really believe that if they spout this fiction enough, the voters will be duped. It did not work in 2006 and it will not work now.
Last month, Conservative MP Caroline Spelman attacked the Labour government for forcing councils to raise council tax. This month, local Tories are attacking the Liberal Democrat administration for doing so in Richmond. Is it the case that the party who have turned the split into a performance art, are completely ignoring their leaders desperate plea to the Conservative Councillors Association last week, that they “need to be one party - not separate little parties of MPs, MEPs, peers and councillors.”
There is certainly evidence here to suggest that whilst Mr Cameron’s claim that “councillors sometimes feel ignored by the national party” is probably true, he has failed to spot the fact that the local party are pretty keen on joining the rest of Britain today in ignoring him and his Conservative colleagues at Westminster.
We have seen clearly, that the local Tories are ignoring their own recent history, they are ignoring their own party, they clearly ignored the Liberal manifesto at the last election and now they are ignoring the intelligence of the voters in Richmond-upon-Thames. Those same voters will remember that when the Conservative took control of the borough in 2002, they put up Council Tax by over 15%. They did not do this to improve services; you only have to look at the state they left our secondary schools in to see that, they did it so that they could bribe the electorate with a 0% rise in 2006.
Happily, the voters of Richmond-upon-Thames were not so naive as the Tories thought. Last year they showed that they could not be bribed and would not forget the truth amongst the Tory spin. What a shame that a year down the line, the Conservatives locally have learned nothing. Thank goodness for the intelligence of the electorate in the borough.
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