WHAT trite and triumphalist tosh from John Tanner (June 12) crowing about the number of Labour councillors at the Town Hall.

What he doesn’t mention is that under our discredited voting system, Labour has 70 per cent of the seats on just 40 per cent of the vote. How democratic is that? It’s not healthy for one party to be so dominant.

I hold no brief for the Tories but it can’t be right for 15-20 per cent of Oxford voters to have had no representation at the Town Hall for 12 years. And the Greens’ 20 per cent vote share should be worth 10 councillors, not five.

Oxford is now a one-party state, just as the county council is a one-party (Tory) state, not just numerically, but literally. Local Labour is positively Stalinist, having neutered the opposition through abolishing the Area Committees and centralising planning. It’s also broken with precedent by hogging all the Politburo, sorry, Cabinet seats once shared on a pro-rata basis.

Forty per cent of the vote, seventy per cent of the seats, 100 per cent of the power. That’s not local democracy but the denial of it. And this bunch had the effrontery to urge – albeit informally – the magnificent Michael Haines, of Marston, to join them – as if.

Pride before a fall: hubris will set in, the internal rivalries will surface (several of them covet Andrew Smith’s seat) and will Labour still have 33 councillors five years from now, if we get a Labour Government, one which would dutifully continue the Tories austerity programme?

I think not. Enjoy your lofty position while you can.

JOHN GREEN
Risinghurst

Today’s letters

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