Rerun The County Council Election In Lanchester

I like the two County Councillors for Lanchester, and I have known one of them for 35 years, so I have always resisted the many suggestions that I call for the election to be rerun. Yes, their party, not them but their party, openly cheated by manufacturing a criminal charge against me. And yes, even after that, the declared result was pretty much impossible. To echo the most common refrain, I got more votes than that in Burnhope alone.

But if you grew up in the land of Durham County Council, then you take in your stride a level of municipal corruption that would be litigated to Kingdom Come anywhere else in Britain, and which would provoke riots in the streets in much of the rest of Europe. No, I said, think of the cost of a by-election.

The cost of a by-election. In this ward, Labour factored that in by fielding the candidates that it did, and the voters did so by electing them. No one has ever seriously suggested that they were both going to be in office until the spring of 2021. For one reason or another, there was always going to be at least one by-election here in the course of this term.

The Labour Party openly cheated by manufacturing a criminal charge against me. And even after that, the declared result was pretty much impossible. I got more votes than that in Burnhope alone. As was always going to happen at some point during this term, the County Council election in the Lanchester Ward needs to be rerun. The two sitting Councillors need to have the decency to resign and make that happen, as it was always going to happen one way or another. No one has ever seriously suggested that they were both going to be in office until the spring of 2021.