Monday 17th April, 2023
The Colchester Conservative election manifesto for 2023 pledges local homes for local people, looking after our coastal rivers and bizarrely “making Colchester more Roman.”
The messages have appeared under the website ciy-of-colchether.com, which is a little deceiving.
The manifesto begins with a personal message from Conservative Group Leader, Cllr Darius Laws:
“You were promised a 0% council tax rise before the left-wing coalition took control of the town hall in Colchester. Now they are increasing in your council tax by the maximum amount they are allowed to, as well as introducing new charges to collect your garden waste.
We want the city of Colchester Council to focus on our more municipal services delivered to the majority of households, and we will keep council tax low.”
This introduction from Darius doesn’t mention that he personally put forward a Motion for an EGM shortly after the last set of local elections.
The Motion called for no increase in Council Tax. Darius then voted AGAINST his own Motion, along with the majority of his Tory Councillors who were whipped.
The pointless EGM called by Darius as part of this political stunt was estimated to be around £5k.
Oh – and it’s quite a stretch labelling Council Leader Dave King and Cabinet members Mark Cory and Martin Goss as “left wing.” Even Deputy Leader of the Council, Labour’s Cllr Adam Fox, is from the centre ground of the party.
Darius continues by setting out his Tory party priorities:
“To nurture and attract business to the city to increase prosperity and opportunity for all.
An efficient and simple waste collection service, which works for all types of properties and all residents.
An effective street service to keep our streets, parks, rivers, and our coast, clean and tidy. Local planning and development control to stop uncontrolled, urban sprawl and protect the unique identities of all villages and rural communities, and a planning service that delivers organic growth in our communities, which has money for infrastructure and acts in the interests of existing residents.”
Which is quite a snappy pledge.
We’d be keen to hear how the claim of keeping our rivers clean and tidy matches up with Tory MP Will Quince and his consistent voting against environmental measures.
Other manifesto pleasures from the local Tories include cutting the cost of politics, improving infrastructure, investing in rural communities, making Colchester more Roman, and local homes for local people.
There is the pledge to remove the election by thirds system and change the election cycle to every four years.
The local homes for local people part of the manifesto adds:
“If the government is unable to address, the multimillion pound infrastructure deficit, we will seek to have Colchester’s house, building target rapidly reduced and strengthen the criteria for people to seek social housing in Colchester”
This overlooks that the failure of the government to address the multimillion pound infrastructure deficit is the failure of a… Tory government.
Plus the local Conservatives have consistently voted through the Garden Village plans with little scrutiny or opposition.
Last May the Colchester Tories had their arses handed back to them on a plate by the local electorate. This was at the peak of partygate and the shit show that was Boris Johnson’s dying days as a PM. The local party paid the price for Colchester MP Will Quince continuing to support his boss.
Well done to the local Tories for actually publishing a manifesto. We’ll move on to having a shifty at the LibDem manifesto when the day job is done and dusted for the day.
Meanwhile Colcheter Labour has gone rogue with an AWOL manifesto for May, despite claiming that “Labour has a plan to build a better Colchester.”
We’d love to see what those plans are, Comrades.
Sadly for Darius and his Tory pals, the sums simply don’t add up this time. The 17 seats that are up for grabs in May are in traditionally strong LibDem and Labour wards. It would take something quite spectacular for the Tories to take control of the City Council once again in a couple of weeks.
They will probably emerge as the largest political group, but we suspect that Darius will be writing about the “left-wing coalition” for another year at least.
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