Engineering the Carfax city centre by-election last week for when the students were away was a cynical ploy by Labour.

I’m not arguing that my party – the Greens – would have won had the election been held in term time (though we did narrowly win the seat in May), but rather that manipulating the timing of elections for political advantage is fundamentally undemocratic.

In this case, the result of Labour’s decision to run the election out of term time was to disenfranchising nearly 70 per cent of the electorate, something even gerrymandering would have struggled to deliver.

As a result, we just had one of the lowest turnouts in living memory with the winner being returned with the support of less than four per cent of registered voters.

It is telling that those who were disenfranchised by Labour have now started an online petition at change.org calling for the election to be re-run during term time.

The Carfax election was a victory for Labour but a kick in the teeth for democracy.

Cllr David Thomas

Green Party City Councillor

Holywell ward

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Today’s letters
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