A Moral Decision for You

There is a decision to be made here. Not by politicians, but by you.

£15 - 25 million of public money will now be spent electing councillors to authorities that are already scheduled to disappear, only for another election to be held a year later. The money will be spent. The only question is what it buys.

So ask yourself what you would rather have.

Would you prefer ballot papers, count halls, and councillors serving briefly in transitional bodies, or the funding to recruit and employ 100 - 200 qualified nurses on three-year contracts, many of whom would need to be recruited from abroad because Britain does not currently train enough of its own?

Would you prefer a duplicated election cycle, or the ability to recruit and retain 40 - 75 fully trained GPs on three-year contracts, again, many recruited internationally, delivering hundreds of thousands of appointments and reducing waiting times where it actually matters?

Would you prefer another set of polling stations, or sustained funding for 110 - 240 border officers and immigration caseworkers on three-year contracts, strengthening processing capacity and enforcement year after year?

These professionals do not appear by magic. They must be recruited, often from abroad, integrated into the system, and retained. That requires stable contracts and sustained funding. This money would have provided exactly that.

This is not theoretical. The money will be spent. It can only be spent once.

In Dorset. In Buckinghamshire. In North Yorkshire. Elections were postponed during council reorganisations because Parliament had completed the legal groundwork first. Councils were being replaced, and holding elections to bodies about to cease existing was recognised as administratively pointless. Nobody declared democracy dead. Nobody launched legal crusades. The system moved forward, and public money was not spent twice for the same outcome.

This time, a different decision was made. A legal challenge ensured elections must now happen twice instead of once.

Nigel Farage made his decision. He chose the performance. He chose the headlines. He chose the political spectacle of claiming victory. Those things generate attention. But they do not recruit nurses on three-year contracts. They do not bring in trained doctors from abroad. They do not employ border officers. They do not fix the very problems he says are broken.

You may believe that was the right course. You may believe strict adherence to electoral timing outweighs administrative efficiency. That is a legitimate view. But it has consequences. The money will now be spent on process, not personnel.

So the real question is not whether elections should happen. They will.

The question is simpler.

If you had £25 million in your hand today, would you spend it on a second set of elections, or on three-year contracts for the trained professionals, from Britain or abroad, so often said to be missing?

That is the decision.