Tory Local Government Policy - anti-democratic?

Today's announcement by the Tories of their proposals for local government reform will cause a great deal of concern for those of us who care about local government. Scrapping regional bodies is controversial but hardly anti-democratic and nor can directly elected mayors be considered so either, in fact I'm rather a fan. But holding referendums if Council tax goes over a certain threshold? Surely that is what Council Elections are for, if a Lib Dem Council (for example) puts up Council tax by 10% then the public have the right to use their vote to remove them. I have always believed that referendums are dangerous and should be used as little as possible (if at all), extending them to issues such as Council Tax just makes Local Councillors even weaker and means they hold even less responsibility.

Come on Cameron if you really support Local Democracy restore Councillors responsibilities.

Tory gerrymandering?

David Cameron has made a few suggestions about how to re-balance the House of Commons. Naturally as a Labourite i would love to be able to attack these proposals as gerrymandering but unfortunately in all good consciousness i can't. The fact is that the UK's election system is skewed in favour of Labour at the expense of the Conservatives. This is quite simply unfair. Whilst no system can be perfect there is clearly still something slightly wrong with our system when Labour needs as little as 35% to form a majority whereas the Tories need over 40% (assuming the Lib Dem vote doesn't collapse completely)

Politically I believe that politics is self correcting, voters will get the outcome they want, so whilst a few extra seats for the Tories might make a minor difference now in the long term it will have little impact on who gets to run the country.

Opps - Gideon on the Ropes

This is what we all like to see, a good old fashioned Tory scandal... Money, yachts, Chums from Oxford etc etc. Clearly the Tories forgot that Mandy is back and one thing you do not do is mess with Lord Mandy.

The fact that even the True Blue Telegraph and Mail are running big with this story suggests that Cameron has a battle on his hands. I'm sure anyone who saw him on the ten o'clock news will agree that he looked more flustered than he has in the past. This is a true test of his abilities to manage a crisis but it could also be an opportunity to offload a potential rival before the next election.