It's all happening in England's smallest county: there's going to be another by-election.
Oakham Hub News reports the resignation of Ian Razzell, one of the members for the Oakham South Ward. He was elected as a Conservative in 2019, but earlier this month announced that he had left the group to sit as an Independent.
He was the council's armed forces champion and has told Oakham News Hub:
"Principally, the values and standards of a 37 year career in the Army are binary and at odds with the actions and plans of a number of elected members."
The by-election has not yet been called.
You would need the combined services of a Kremlinologist and an expert in irrational numbers to fully understand Rutland politics these days.
But as far as I can make out, the Conservatives won 16 of the 27 seats at Rutland Council's 2019 all-out elections. Since then, defections and by-election defeats have seen their group shrink to 6.
The other two councillors for Oakham South are Liberal Democrats, and we won a by-election there in August of last year by polling two-thirds of the votes cast.
I'm incredibly sad to see Ian go because if politics needs one thing it's more Armed Forces bores elected to positions of responsibility. All that experience of waiting around . . . then fetching and carrying some stuff around a barracks . . . then waiting some more is absolutely invaluable when it comes to dealing with littering, graffiti, vandalism, dog fouling, flushing roadside drains, reporting abandoned cars and deciding whether an extension fits in with local planning policy.
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