‘Principled’ decision doesn’t wash

According to their Focus leaflet, pushed through my door recently, local Liberal Democrats are not putting up a candidate in the Police Commissioner election on November 15 because they say that “it’s in the best interests of Warwickshire residents that the police service remains non-partisan.”

This is pretty odd. If local Liberal Democrats actually believe that, why do they have local Lib Dem politicians serving on the Police Authority? That’s the current body which takes decisions about how we are policed. The commissioner takes over from the authority after November 15. It’s a bit two-faced to serve on the current governing body but refuse to seek representation on its successor.

Then they say we should vote for somebody who is truly independent. They don’t seem to have done much homework there.

There isn’t a truly independent candidate. Labour have a candidate, the Conservatives have a candidate and the candidate masquerading as ‘Independent’, Ron Ball, tried, unsuccessfully, to be the official Conservative candidate. So we have, in effect, one Labour and two Tories running.

I suspect the real reason the LibDems have walked away from this contest is because they have absolutely no chance of winning it. So the pretence at high principle doesn’t wash. - Cllr Jerry Weber, Leamington Clarendon (Lab).