Vote clever

Instead of being about things the council has some control over, such as schools, care for the elderly and the local environment, the main issue has become something the council has no control over: A war in Iraq that is, to all intents and purposes, over.

With an almost McCarthyite zeal, all Labour councillors and candidates are apparently being forced to confess "if they are now, or have ever been, in favour of the imperialist aggression in the Gulf".

Even though most of them were not, many could still lose to candidates from the minor parties, who hope to increase the number of councillors they have to six or seven each, because of this issue.

The main opposition party has, meanwhile, kept largely silent. When it has spoken out on various issues the word "Conservative" has rarely been used for fear of scaring the generally left-leaning population into realising it might actually win.

This has also meant anything pro-Labour can be dismissed as spin and anything it says is accepted as "fair comment from Joe Public".

Meanwhile Right-wing newspaper columnists (I'm looking at you, Mr Parry) have used their position to make common cause with the Left, namely punishing Mr Blair via the local ballot box.

If he was not persuaded by the French president, German chancellor and goodness knows who else before the war, a few protest votes for Socialists Against The War or the Greens are unlikely to make any difference now, particularly when the majority of public opinion is behind him.

The upshot of all this is by losing six or seven seats to the minor parties and a couple to the Conservatives, an antiwar Labour administration may well be replaced by a pro-war Tory one, which would take charge of our schools, social services and local environment with a Right-wing agenda of cuts.

Absurd? Even Voltaire would have laughed.

-Gavin Kennedy, Hove