The news says Brian Tolver the chair of Handforth Parish Council has resigned. Not totally unexpected because the elections are in May, so current councillors have reached the end of their tenure and need to be re-elected, and perhaps he didn’t fancy his chances.
However, according to our parish clerk there are councillors resigning across the country because they’re afraid they’ll be held up to public ridicule like the Handforth councillors were. Our parish council has lost 7 out of 9 councillors, leaving the council unable to meet the legal minimum number of people to make decisions. They are urgently trying to recruit new councillors. Might I be interested, he enquired? I said no, not after what happened at Handforth, because I don’t want to be an object of nationwide ridicule and derision if I say something wrong and it happens to be on the record. Yes, he said - that’s what everyone is saying.
He reckons this has severely impacted the future of local government because nobody wants to accept a public facing role in case they get “cancelled”. So I (and my neighbours) now don’t have a functioning parish council because everyone is too afraid to take the job.