So, this was the year when we were supposed to have no elections, a time to reflect, to build relationships and to make progress. Well the Tories made sure that that wasn’t going to happen didn’t they!

First off there was the West Midlands Metro Mayor election in May. An idea by the Tories to try to replicate the London Mayor and Assembly model but as usual done on the cheap outside of the south east. Here we get a Mayor but no elected assembly to hold the Mayor to account.

As if that wasn’t enough Theresa May, left to her own devises, decided that she and her government were so popular she’d call a snap General Election to increase her majority.

How wrong can you be! She came out of that little skirmish all battered and torn, didn’t she? Gone was her all be it small working majority, and in its place, came a behind closed doors deal with the Unionist DUP of Northern Ireland in order to keep her grip on power.

Instead of being “Strong and Decisive” ahead of important Brexit negotiations, Theresa May and her battered Tories came out of the snap general election “Weak and Wobbly” at a price tag of £1.7 billion to buy off the votes of the Unionists in Northern Ireland. A price tag which could prove very costly for the rest of us as another of Theresa May’s well-worn and meaningless phrases “There is no magic money tree” could mean cuts into the budgets of areas such as the West Midlands. Perhaps a “bigoted beggars bush” would be a more suitable turn of phrase?

All this national posturing has been an unnecessary and unwanted diversion for those of us at the local level. It came at a time when we needed to have been getting on with the job of extracting as much energy out of an ever-decreasing local council budget. We have been diverted from our task of balancing the needs and expectations of local residents against the back-drop of more Tory austerity measures stretching out into the distant future.