From the Leader: The choice is yours

You may want to use your vote to register your dissatisfaction with the government of the day, or your disillusionment with national politics, or even your unhappiness with the state of the world.

But in making your choice, I urge you to think local, not national or international. Wokingham Borough Council cannot change the nature of national policy making, let alone influence international politics. But your vote is important because the council provides services on which many local people depend.  Who you chose to represent you on the council can make a real difference to your local community.

In making your decision, I hope you will reflect on the choices political parties themselves make. Parties can choose to focus on the negative, to attack their opponents relentlessly, seeking to encourage and exploit a sense of grievance for their electoral advantage. Parties can also choose to divide people, setting one part of our community against another, in a worrying imitation of the kind of politics we see in the United States. Parties can choose, too, to offer utterly unrealizable promises of reduced council tax and improved services to win votes, even when they know that the council is experiencing a significant reduction in its government support.

There is, however, a different and - in my view - much better set of choices that can be made by political parties. They can present their own achievements and aspirations in a positive way, making the case for voting for them without indulging in relentless knocking copy directed at their opponents. They can choose to bring people together rather than divide them. They can be realistic and honest about the difficult decisions that any party running the council would face - choices that affect not just us now, but our children and grandchildren.

This more positive brand of politics - focusing on achievements and aspirations, uniting people rather than setting them against each other, honest and open about difficult choices, and thinking ahead - is very much the hallmark of the approach of my party, the Liberal Democrats.

Over the past four years, while all around us has seemed uncertain and volatile, we have sought to provide calm, measured, forward-looking leadership of the council. We have kept the council solvent while many other councils have effectively become bankrupt. We have saved more than £30 million over the last three years and been rated as the second most efficient council in England in terms of outcomes achieved per pounds spent. Yet our sharp focus on sound financial management has not blunted our ambition – we have been able to improve services in many areas, from better bus travel to more Special Educational Needs and Disabilities places in the borough, and from new care homes for the elderly to much higher recycling rates.

Our guiding principle, which unites much of what we have done, is to make Wokingham a borough where everyone, regardless of who they are, can achieve their potential and live their best possible life.

You now have the chance to decide whether we can continue with our work or whether you trust our opponents to deliver better outcomes - not just for now but for the future. I hope you will place your faith in the party that has taken its responsibilities seriously, does not shirk difficult decisions, and recognizes that an insolvent council can help no one. I hope that you will vote for your Liberal Democrat candidates.