I agree with Councillors Bright and Cohen in regretting the “democratic deficit” created by the absence of Liberal Democrat candidates from most local wards in the recent Hertsmere elections (‘Two party is normal state’, Your Views, May 27).

This is not because I hold a brief for that party, or any other, but because it is important electors should have the widest possible choice of programmes from which to choose.

However, Messrs Bright and Cohen are Tories, so if the absence of Liberal Democrats from the council chamber is truly a cause of distress, the solution is in their party’s hands — they could simply stop opposing Lib Dem candidates. However, since the departing Lib Dem councillors have forfeited their seats to Tory challengers, it is highly implausible this is a situation which they genuinely regret.

While dripping crocodile tears at the fate of a rival party, they are ruthlessly pursuing their own partisan ends. They are well aware the advent of a Tory Government brings the prospect of years in the wilderness for Tory councillors, just as they experienced in the Nineties under Major, when Labour was locally ascendant.

In the Hertsmere wards in which Liberal Democrats stood both last year and this, the net swing from Tory to Labour was 9.1 per cent.

In those wards in which they did not stand in either year, it was 5.9 per cent. But in those wards in which the Liberal Democrats were absent in 2010, but present in 2011, there was a net swing in the opposite direction, i.e. from Labour to Tory, of 2.7 per cent.

The implications of this are plain to see. At the grass roots level, Liberal Democrat supporters have more in common with Labour, and in the absence of a candidate of their first choice, are more likely to vote Labour than Tory. So the presence of Liberal Democrat candidates would make it easier for Tories to hang on to vulnerable seats when the tide of opinion is flowing against them.

Since the only purpose of the Tory party is to win and hold power, its local protagonists can hardly be condemned for resorting to whatever electoral tactics are most conducive to that end.

But it is saddening, if hardly surprising, they should disguise an exercise of crude political calculation as a display of altruistic concern for a vanquished enemy.

As ever, the moral is that we should beware of Tories bearing gifts, and look for the daggers concealed beneath their cloaks.

John Cartledge
Haddon Close, Borehamwood