Leicestershire Liberal Democrats

After weeks of knocking on doors and delivering leaflets, Leicestershire residents finally had their vote on who they think should be running the council. The votes were cast on 2nd May, the results counted the following day.

The good:

• Where we had the resources to run a strong campaign, we either won or came a close second.
• The Liberal Democrats remain the leading opposition party on the Council.
• We held the vast majority of our seats, despite a difficult national scene.
• The BNP didn't win a seat this time.
• Many of our candidates increased their majorities, including one who achieved a fantastic 63% of the vote!

The Liberal Democrat Party Political Broadcast was aired last night.
It highlighted how Lib Dems in government had worked to reduce income tax by £600 per year, giving hard pressed workers a little bit of extra cash in these difficult times. Over 300,000 of Leicestershire's residents will benefit from this taxbreak and nearly 30,000 will no longer have to pay any income tax at all!

The Leicestershire Conservatives launched their manifesto today. (You can read it here. The page ordering is a little funny, but if you concentrate you can make some sense of it.)

It's a nicely designed document. Good graphical design, a clear layout, punchy messages. As you'd expect it says nice things about what they've done while in power, and what they hope to achieve if re-elected. It all looks very good on paper, but what's being said between the lines? This article gives just a few things to be looking out for:

Health Minister Norman Lamb came to Hinckley today to launch our Manifesto for the 2013 County Council elections.

The last four years have seen the Tories make a mess of things.
Reckless approaches schools and education, the careless giving away of care homes without proper consultation, a complete lack of ideas in addressing the needs of the local economy and some serious scandals from senior members in the Conservative cabinet. They even had a leader being forced to step down due to severe abuse of expenses.

Why there's a problem.

Following the abolition of the national standards board for councillors, it's become up to political parties themselves to discipline their councillors. In most of the country this hasn't been a big deal but Leicestershire hasn't. There have been a number of scandals within the Conservative ranks, the worst example involving their leader. This exposed existing measures to hold councillors to account as completely inadequate. Everyone in the Leicestershire County Council have agreed that this needs to be addressed.

It's been a strange last four years at the Leicestershire County Council. Had you looked at the Tory administration this time last year, you'd have found nothing remarkable. On the surface at least, everything seemed fine.

Since then, Leicestershire has continually hit the national headlines. The leader had to resign over expense, a deputy leader followed him due to bad judgement... The Conservatives have clearly lost their grip on the situation, their credibility collapsing with every new scandal!

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has closed the Liberal Democrat Spring Conference in Brighton by calling on members to spread the message of the Party's commitment in Government to deliver a stronger economy and a fairer society.

In his keynote Leader's speech, Nick paid tribute to the work of the Party in winning the Eastleigh by-election, beating the Conservatives into third place and squeezing Labour while campaigning on the Lib Dem record of delivering in Government.

Last Wednesday, the Conservatives passed their budget with £79 million in cuts over the next four years, £30 million of which haven't yet been identified. They've even had to drop their trademark policy of freezing council tax - they're planning yearly rises of 1.5% starting from next year.

With income from the central government being reduced, these are hard times for any council. The problem is that the Conservatives are making it harder than it needs to be. The budget doesn't excuse the multiple blunders such as:

The Liberal Democrats on the County Council believe that investing in renewable energy is vital for our environment and economic future and that councils have a role to play in this. The first amendment we will be proposing at the budget meeting on Wednesday asks officers to carry out a feasibly study into the Council producing green energy from renewal sources.