Will anything see Labour challenged?

I’VE often heard it said that people can get used to anything, given enough time. Once you’ve spent enough of your life in a certain situation, you stop wanting to leave and start to adapt. Sometimes this can be good; if you’re serving a long sentence in p

As a town we’ve spent years going from one national scandal to another, to the point where sometimes I feel like our only defining feature is the vast amounts of political corruption. I don’t think I need to list these incidents – if I did, they’d probably end up taking up the whole section – but suffice it to say that we’ve probably been through more rightful controversy than any other town in Britain. And yet, it seems like there are only a small fraction who give a toss.

Our council’s hold on this town has been almost absolute, to the point where, if the polls are to be believed, not even their indifference to the rape of hundreds of children could put a dent in their voting base. In any sane world, the CSE scandal would have seen the end of Labour in this town on both a local and an international level. And yet it’s our apathy that’s to blame for this as much as theirs.

It’s us that allowed them to get away with it, year after year, and even after the full extent of their corruption hits the news, we still seem every bit as disinterested as we were before it broke. If this election does not lead to Labour’s support from this town crumbling, then we might as well give in and admit that no act by this council, however atrocious, will lead to them being ousted or even challenged.

Jack Cawthorne, Eastwood