Voters have the power to axe Wiltshire's crony cabinet

WELL, now we know what Wiltshire leader Jane Scott thinks of her minions in the south of the county.
They’re good enough as lobby fodder. They can be relied upon to vote the right way to force through her pet policies.
But cabinet responsibility? No way, they’re just not up to it.
Tribalism being what it is, none of our Conservative councillors has erupted in fury publicly following Mrs Scott’s less than diplomatic comment that promotion is based on “a number of factors” including “skills, experience and capacity”.
She doesn’t think they’ve got enough of those crucial qualities, or she’d have done the electorally popular thing and picked one of them when she chose to expand her inner circle in a mini-reshuffle.
But she knows they’ll stay schtum, however humiliated they feel, for the sake of the party and to keep any faint hope of future promotion alive.
Did you know, folks, it doesn’t have to be this way? Legally, I mean.
We don’t have to tolerate the absence of representation for the south of the county on the only decision- making body that counts.
Since the Localism Act of 2011 there has been no compulsion for local authorities to be run by a leader and cabinet.
Indeed, not far away in Bridport, Dorset, some people are campaigning for a referendum to do away with what they call “government by contempt” and to have a cross-party committee running the show instead.
If the Public First group can collect signatures from five per cent of the West Dorset district electorate, voters will have to be offered that choice.
There are several structural options that are possible if enough people want them, and I recommend the Local Government Association’s publication, Rethinking Governance, which you can find online, to anyone interested in finding out more.
In West Dorset, the district’s Conservative leaders failed to attend a public meeting called by the campaigners, though the local Tory MP, Oliver Letwin, did turn up and dutifully defended the status quo as “more efficient”.
It will be fascinating to see how this develops.
Some residents down there are so disillusioned that they’re starting to call for a unitary authority. Poor, deluded souls. They need saving from themselves.
Don’t do it, chaps! Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. Learn from our experience and just don’t go there!