By Cllr Andy Croy
The Borough’s expert on political deal making is Conservative MP Theresa May, who famously used £1.5bn of tax payers’ money to buy the vote of the extremist Democratic Unionist Party MPs in the House of Commons to prop up her own floundering government.
With this standard of behaviour as their local political blueprint, it is no wonder that some of Boris Johnson’s local Conservative councillors have reacted so suspiciously to the establishment of the Wokingham Borough Partnership – alleging that councillors have in some way been bought by the Lib Dems.
This might be the Johnsonian Conservative expectation of how politics is done, but, as we have seen, most people in our community and our country have a very different moral gauge to Conservative councillors and MPs.
I was delighted that this paper published the Partnership memorandum in last week’s edition. If I could make one request of this paper it is that the memorandum is published again, but in larger print and without the greyed background – it was so hard to read.
One consequence of the Partnership agreement has been the much greater ability of councillors from smaller parties to be able to contribute to our community through our work on various outside bodies on which the Borough places a representative.
In my previous five years as a councillor I had, for two of those years, been able to secure a solitary role on a Berkshire-wide body while consistently being denied a role in any body with any direct link to the community I represent.
The Conservatives ruthlessly used their control of Council to deny me all opportunities to provide extra service to my community. This year, I am now able to contribute to the work of five outside bodies, mostly with strong links to my ward of Bulmershe and Whitegates or nearby areas.
The Conservatives are currently in the first two stages of grief – denial and anger – over their loss of control of the Council.
They need to reflect very carefully on just how bad the results were for them. They got 37% of the votes cast – their joint worse ever performance since 2019 when a combination of their handling of Brexit and the impending Euro elections also saw their vote evaporate.
Last year, their longer term decline was hidden by a vaccine bounce at the polls which saw them benefitting from an across the board uplift in their share of the vote.
Johnson’s local Conservatives have displayed a touching concern for residents who have voted Labour and now see Labour councillors working constructively with LibDem and independent councillors. I am rather reminded of the scene in the Jungle Book where Kaa meets Mowgli but suffice to say the feedback I have received from people who voted for me and who voted for LibDem candidates has been uniformly positive.
I can’t help feeling that Conservative time would be better spent working out why so many of their voters deserted them. While Conservatives may feel betrayed by people having the temerity to vote for other parties, most people feel rather liberated from what at times has seemed like a one-party local authority.
While they are doing this, I and the other members of the Labour group will be doing what we always do: spending our time out in our communities, be it on our Communty Cleanups with residents, in our Community Speedwatch Groups with other volunteers, in the outside bodies to which we have been elected, or simply knocking on doors to listen to what residents have to say.
On the topic of service it would be remiss of me not to finish by celebrating the extraordinary service of Her Majesty the Queen on the occasion of her 70th years of service.
By its very nature, service as a hereditary monarch is service not many of us will be called to give but we have been extraordinarily fortunate that someone with such a traditional sense of public duty has been our monarch.
Cllr Andy Croy is the deputy leader of Wokingham Labour, and ward councillor for Bulmershe and Whitegates
