Barring last minute entries, it looks inevitable that Watford’s mayoral election in May will be contested by just three candidates, Conservative, Labour and Lib Dems. But just what, in terms of this election, do these old titles stand for? Does anyone really think that, say, the Conservatives have the best solutions to Watford’s car parking problems? Or that Labour is more able to deliver waste disposal services? Or that Lib Dems have the answers to revive Watford Market? No, in the real world we all know that these services are provided for the council by large commercial companies (Indigo, Veolia, and Wellington Markets) to whom our council has outsourced its responsibilities. Party politics doesn’t come into it. Whether the Mayor is representative of one party or another is now an obsolete irrelevance. So just what is the point of an Elected Mayor who wears a blue, red or yellow rosette?

Just look at the ‘ideas’ the candidates are touting; one wants to provide water fountains to solve the plastic bottle plague, another wants to tackle fly-tipping, another wants to create a ‘dementia-friendly’ town. But all these gimmicks are, and have been for years, the responsibility of existing service providers; do the candidates really think that their voices will make a scrap of difference? Is this what we’re going to pay them £65,000 pa for?

What Watford needs desperately is a Mayor who will have the courage to face the big issues and will strive to make some impact. For example, where do they stand on the recurrent attempts to exhume the dead parrot of the Met Line Extension? Will they have the courage to say ‘not a penny more from Watford’s tax payers’? What do they say about the need for Watford to fight for a greater say in its own government? Watford a unitary authority? Watford cut free from the stranglehold of Herts County Council? Watford a London Borough? OK, all these are complicated and difficult, but if the Mayor of Watford won’t fight for the town, then who will? Why is that Watford’s industrialists, entrepreneurs, commercial moguls all acknowledge Watford’s importance as London’s own northern powerhouse, yet our politicians are all too timid to admit this self-evident truth? After enduring sixteen years of a policy of ‘eyes tight shut’ we need a Mayor who will open their eyes and will think about how to move Watford ahead of the competition and into the 21st century.

Anthony Bramley-Harker

Hibbert Avenue, Watford