Sir – I was amazed at the alacrity with which Ian Hudspeth got the chop after daring to stand against councillor Keith Mitchell.

It seems, after all, that Oxfordshire County Council is capable of moving at more than the speed of a pre-global warming glacier, at least where its internal feuds are concerned.

These antics only underline the need for an entirely separate and autonomous administration for Oxford.

Why should a city that repeatedly shows its distaste for Conservative policies be saddled with the electoral choice of a county where — in the words of the fictional but all-too-believable Tory Sir Alan B’Stard — ‘they’d vote in a hatstand if you pinned a blue rosette to it’?

Peter Lewis, Oxford