News

.... a weekly column from Dover and Deal MP Gwyn Prosser

10 May 2007

The Conservatives did well last week in the local elections in England and especially down here in the South East. For the first time in a very long time there’s not single Labour controlled council anywhere in Kent and even Gravesham, which we have held for many years, fell to the Tories.

Compared to the losses elsewhere, here in the District of Dover we have not faired too badly – the official picture is that Labour suffered a net loss of just two seats but behind that headline is a rather sadder story because we lost all three of our Middle Deal seats to the Conservatives and we lost some very good councillors and candidates including the Leader of the Labour Group, Peter Wells.

Peter did a good job when he was Leader of DDC and he’s played a very responsible role during the last four years leading the opposition but at the same time supporting the Council on crucial issues like regeneration and the development of the District.

When I first came to Dover in 1979, we had a Conservative Government, Margaret Thatcher had just been elected as Prime Minister, the Conservatives had been ruling the County of Kent for 105 years and their colleagues had an iron grip on Dover District Council. At that time no one could have predicted that we would ever remove the Tories from County Hall, take most of the Councils in Kent and elect Labour Member’s of Parliament to half of the County’s seats – but we did.

In speeches and in articles I used to describe those changes as the rising tide of democratic socialism in the South East, and so it was. No one can deny that the incoming tide slowed down last Thursday but that’s a long way from saying that Labour is going to be washed out into the bay.

We know from past experience that every political party suffers setbacks when it’s in government and passing through the dreaded mid-term period. Despite all the huge improvements we have made in the last ten years there have been some mistakes and some misjudgements and it’s become a fact of political life that the electorate will use the relative safety of local elections to give the ruling party a bit of a kicking.

Added to the mid-term factor we are in our third term of office and this only serves to concentrate people’s concerns about those bits of policy they’ve been unhappy about.

Up until last Thursday the official status of our Council was ‘no overall control’ but as everyone knows, the Conservatives have been in power in Dover for the last four years by courtesy of the Liberal Democrats so the change of status is hardly a dramatic one. Yes, so the Tories did well last week – but not at all well enough to stem the tide.