Letter: Conservatives Are Breaking Their Election Promises

Published on: 25 May, 2016
Updated on: 25 May, 2016

From Peter Elliott

I attended the council meeting last night [May 24], and it has become clear that this is no longer just about how many houses are built and where, it has become a crisis of democracy.

As George Domikakis says in his letter: Will Tory Councillors Do The Honourable Thing, the Conservatives got themselves elected on a promise to protect the green belt. Now they have been elected they are doing the exact opposite.

This cannot be right. It is a travesty of democracy. The Nolan Standards in public life include honesty and transparency, they do not include secrecy and deceit.

If Cllr Spooner and his colleagues genuinely believed that this is what the electorate wanted, why did he not simply say, at the election: “We need the houses, we are going to have to have large scale development on the green belt”?

The fact that he did not say this, suggests that he suspected that this is not what his electorate wanted. The council is trying to impose it’s will on the community regardless. It should be the other way round. This is not China, this is the oldest democracy in the world.

Remember what happened to Nick Clegg and his party who reneged on a headline election promise. At least he had the excuse of being the junior partner in a coalition. Guildford Conservatives have no such excuse.

Responses to Letter: Conservatives Are Breaking Their Election Promises

Anna-Marie Davis Reply

May 26, 2016 at 11:49 am

I amuse myself with the fact that the majority of the houses will not be affordable, other than to people moving out of London.

If the local Conservative party assume that each new Surrey resident will automatically vote Conservative, as sadly many people in this area do, then they may well get more than they bargained for.

London is a Labour stronghold, and if Guildford is to woo London money and commuters, it may well also woo their voting patterns. Building on the green belt may make some Tory developers rich, but it ultimately take away their power. Every cloud has a silver, or possibly red, lining.