Let’s be positive. And I mean absolutely positive.
Despite Labour taking a new (second) seat in Harington Ward, Formby, on a 40 per cent turnout, I firmly believe that with the correct level of funding and sufficient campaigning ground troops - both absolutely essential - I can hold my seat in next year’s elections.
Why?
Because I have lived there for more than 40 years and have a unique understanding of local issues and the need to return value for residents who pay the highest council tax (and income tax) in Sefton.
To do this, residents have to be properly informed about the specific needs of local government.
Labour now hold 51 of the 66 council seats in the borough, which means we are in grave danger of becoming a one-party state.
And what bearing that has on the famous historic adage of Lord Acton that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Sefton’s Labour council operates under a dictatorial top-down system. A cabinet clique of just nine individuals makes all the major decisions affecting our daily lives, our aspirations and our investment in property. There is no tolerance of internal criticism.
So the ward’s two Labour councillors have no leeway to exercise an individual voice. They are not touchstones for modernity.
They are merely voices crying in the wilderness against money wasting on dogmatic projects such as re-inventing the fortunes of Bootle New Strand - currently costing millions in interest payments alone - and the allocation of social housing to outsiders rather than locals.
A Conservative voice is vital to hold such blatant mismanagement to account. So there must be a wake-up call to Conservative voters. There is no room for apathy or being complacent.
If all Conservative-minded residents voted in person or applied for a postal vote, they would outnumber all opposition.
That is why sufficient funding from Central Office and constituency coffers, to reach all residents no fewer than three times before next May, is absolutely paramount in securing our goal.
So we must insist on local and national financial reform with immediate effect. That includes sufficient resources for postal deliveries to every household.
Only then will people be fully aware of Sefton’s deficiencies.
By Cllr Joe Riley, Conservative Councillor for Harington Ward
