By Graham Smith
Very slowly, like the lifting of a November fog, the 28 Cornwall councillors who are members of Reform UK are coming to realise that they are members of a fan club and not a political party.
In other news, some of the 16 Independent members of the council are reflecting on why they probably won’t join the Liberal Democrats in any coalition administration. Now read on.
Yesterday’s (Monday’s) flutter of excitement over “flag-gate” (more of that later) has awoken some Reform councillors to the reality of scrutiny and challenge. If any of them thought that winning elections ended arguments, they are in for a shock. Electoral success brings responsibility. It brings very hard work.
If there was one result which on Friday united nearly all Cornwall councillors and officials it was their near-unanimous disappointment over the defeat of the long-serving and highly-respected Independent member for St Columb Minor and Colan, John Fitter. Once a Conservative, he had represented locals since the council was created in 2009.
The St Columb Minor and Colan division has a very particular problem which exemplifies the sorts of things that local councillors have to deal with. Every year, the division is invaded by upwards of 50,000 young people who have only three things on their minds: sex, drugs and rock’n’roll.
The Boardmasters’ festival brings days of traffic chaos and is severely detrimental to the local economy, unless it is that particular and tiny sector which sells tat to tourists.
Younger readers (and their worried parents) will remember that last year’s festival was disrupted by the collapse of a stage, injuring several people. It was an extremely serious accident and triggered a formal public safety inquiry by the licensing authority, Cornwall Council.
Cornwall Reports has been trying to obtain a copy of that inquiry report, suspecting that County Hall’s ferocious tourism lobby will be doing everything it can to prevent or delay it from ever seeing the light of day and posing a threat to their favourite economic sector. The concerns of local residents are trampled over, literally.
Councillor Fitter shared Cornwall Reports’s curiosity about this inquiry report, but the responsibility for asking more questions about it now falls to his conqueror, Reform UK councillor Christine Parsonage. Councillor Parsonage lives in Torpoint with fellow Reform UK councillor and current group leader Rob Parsonage, who conveniently is also her husband.
She now faces a regular drive along the A38, conservatively estimated at about 90 minutes each way, just to find the council division to which she has now been elected. We are confident that she will be unflinchingly assiduous in her attendance at local parish council meetings and won’t mind at all that she regularly doesn’t get home until well after midnight.
County Hall’s Independent councillors do not blame Reform UK for this change in the representation of St Columb Minor and Colan - they blame the Liberal Democrats. For reasons known only to themselves, the Lib Dems entered a “paper” candidate who did very little campaigning. She came fifth but nevertheless got 118 votes. Reform’s councillor Parsonage triumphed by only 93.
The Lib Dems were not the only other party to challenge councillor Fitter but they are the only political party now asking his former group for support to help them form an administration.
There are similar stories from all over Cornwall. If the Lib Dems had not split the vote by entering divisions where they stood no chance, they would not have encouraged the arithmetic in which Reform got 28 councillors. The Independents are not the only group who are cross with the Lib Dems about this - some Mebyon Kernow and Green candidates were also thwarted by the Lib Dems’ division of the anti-Tory, anti-Reform vote.
The St Columb Minor and Colan division, incidentally, covers part of the Newquay Airport and Spaceport estate - as does the neighbouring division of St Columb Major, also now represented by an absentee Reform councillor. Rowland O’Connor lives 45 miles away in Launceston. It’s a good job that the airport and spaceport seldom cause any problems of the sort that might need a local councillor to inquire into what’s going on and how public money is being spent.
There are other Independents who are also not best-pleased with the Lib Dems, at least not all of the time. Andrew Mitchell from St Ives has little time for the Lib Dems’ opportunistic jumping on the bandwagon of claims that millionaire landowners (sometimes called “farmers”) should not have to pay inheritance tax.
Independent councillor Dulcie Tudor, once a Lib Dem, was leading a County Hall crusade against “wokery” long before Reform came along. Hell will freeze before she now joins a Lib Dem administration which also includes Independent Adam Paynter (and probably vice-versa.)
Penzance Independent councillors Tim Dwelly and Jim McKenna are not overly fond of each other. Councillor Dwelly’s ego and ambition to seize a cabinet position is unlikely to enjoy his neighbour’s support.
All of the above is a rather long-winded way of saying that it is by no means certain that the Liberal Democrats can corral 44 councillors into the same block of votes needed to ensure an overall majority.
