Local with bespoke council election manifestos
pendent coalition partners decided to withdraw their support following a Labour group leadership coup – it has put forward six key pledges:
Run a modern, transparent council that works for all of Carmarthenshire;
Seek to reverse the privatisation of social care services;
Restart the council house building scheme;
Build new schools fit for the 21st century and drive up standards;
Create a municipal bus company to improve public transport;
Clean up communities and make recycling easier.
Welsh Labour has also not been slow to attack its rivals. Homing in on Monmouthshire County Council, a spokesman said: “The Tory record is there for all to see and even by their own standards, Wales’ only Tory council has failed to deliver for local people.
“Rather than supporting future generations, they slashed education funding by £3.2m; and instead of fairer council tax bills, the Tory council increased bills almost 25% above the Wales average this year alone. People living in the Tory-run Monmouthshire council area now pay over £230 more in council tax than they did just a few years ago.
“When local businesses suffered because of rates changes by the independent valuations office, it was the Welsh Labour Government which stepped up to the plate, not the local Tory council; and their plans to increase car-park charges by 10% would be a further hammer blow to local traders.
“Rather than safeguarding services, the Tories took a knife to frontline services, including axing free swimming for pensioners, cutting tourism funding and closing a local tourist information centre, and slashed services for some of Monmouthshire’s youngest children.”
Having done very well at the last council elections in 2012, Labour’s main task is to defend those gains.
Although it won a landslide victory in Cardiff five years ago, it may well lose seats to Lib Dems, Conservatives and Plaid Cymru on May 4, although party insiders still expect it to be the biggest group after the election.
Unsurprisingly, the designation with the second-highest number of candidates – Independents, of whom there are 714 – also has no nationwide manifesto.
In some council areas the name Independent is a misnomer because, once elected, the councillors concerned – or at least some of them – join together and form groups of their own. In Pembrokeshire, the “Independent-plus” group actually controls the council.
The other party without a Waleswide manifesto is Ukip, which surprised some by fielding just 80 candidates across the whole country.
In Merthyr Tydfil, where Ukip came second at the 2016 National Assembly election, the party is fielding no candidates at all on May 4.
Such a low number of candidates tends to confirm the view that Ukip lacks a strong activist base and that its appeal has largely derived from the high level of TV coverage given to its former leader Nigel Farage.
“It is not expected to make much of an impact this time anywhere in Wales.