Published at 09:10, Monday, 20 August 2012

PHIL Butler (Courant, Letters August 3), tells us he believes police commissioners need to be ‘independent and impartial and not hark on about party political matters’.

Could he explain, then, why he is standing in the election for this position as a Conservative candidate?

I have noticed, in almost 50 years of political activity and/or public service, that Conservatives seem to think that their opinions are some sort of default position that everyone agrees with, and anyone who opposes them are ‘political’, as if they weren’t!

The Tory Party is historically the most successful electoral party in the world, but that does not give them the right to assume that everybody agrees with them.

They have not won a General Election in Britain since 1992, and it is worth reminding the local Tories, that, although Hexham is the safest Conservative seat in the North-East, only 30.6 per cent of the electorate voted for Guy Opperman.

And on the question of impartiality, how, if elected, would Phil Butler reconcile his position with his being a former police officer?

FRANK RILEY,

Hexham

Published by http://www.hexhamcourant.co.uk