Southampton has a hung council, with 18 Conservatives, 18 Labour councillors and 12 Lib-Dems. Labour should have formed the administration in May 2007 as they hold the position of Mayor, but one Lib-Dem voted with the Conservatives to put them into power.

In November 2007, the conservative-run council sent out a letter to all the council tax payers stating what their budget proposals would be - a 10% cut for the over 65's. They state in the letter that "At the moment this new discount is only a proposal and the final decision to introduce it will not be made by the city council until February 2008". They intended to pay for the discount with £8 million of cuts, mainly attacking children's services and schools (i.e. the discount for the old was to be paid for by hurting the young), but this was not unveilled till Jan 2008.

The Tories knew that they wouldn't be able to pass the budget which is subject to a full vote of the council - they had only 18 seats out of the 48 (37.5%). So why send out the letter?  To publicise their council tax plans, and hopefully to convince some old people that the discount will go ahead if they vote Tory in 2008.  It cost the council £100,000 to pay for this mailshot.

The trouble is that it is not clear that it was legal to send out this mailshot.  In 1986, Margaret Thatcher passed legislation banning councils from issuing party political literature on the rates.  Once a budget has passed it is OK to send out letters explaining changes if they have been substantial. But you shouldn't send out the letter <em>beforehand</em>, knowing that you have absolutely no chance of passing the budget, purely to get party political material out there at the council tax-payer's expense.

I think there should be an investigation into improper use of council tax money, and that the Tories should pay the council back the £100,000.

Some people reading this will be thinking tax cuts? spending cuts? Are these David Cameron's compassionate conservatives or old-fashioned Thatcherite Tories? Well they don't fit in with the touchy feely image the national party is putting about, that's for sure. Maybe the touchy feely stuff is just PR propaganda and the Tories will drop "compassion" just as quicky as Dubya did after being elected in 2000. The local Tories are not even very sensible - the worst decision being to hand two schools to an evangelical Christian consortium to be run, instead of to the trust run by Southampton University (the preferred choice of Labour). 

What is becoming clear from the budget choices is that Conservatives are increasingly enagaged in old people v young people politics, where Conservatives = Old People.