WHILST few people would question the sincerity of Councillor D Thomas, and Mr Morrell, there are many, including myself, who would question their priorities.

The rights and wrongs of the debate over Oaklands Pool have been widely addressed, but many feel the end result could have just as easily been achieved within their membership of the Labour Party, and pursuing the issue there, not chucking their toys out of the pram and skulking off, chomping on a huge dummy of imagined discontent.

There are many more important and wider issues. Councils are limited in what measures they take by the severe limits of central Government funding. To ignore those limits would place an onerous burden on all ratepayers.

As laudable as the single issue of Oaklands Pool may be, there are many who will question how much its provision impacted on other services. How many council employees lost jobs? What was the effect on care to the elderly? The provision of children’s services? Help to the disabled? Care in the community? One effect would certainly be the limiting of funding to SARC (Southampton Advice and Representation Services).

It is not hypocrisy, but hard choices that have to be made within the framework of the vicious attacks on all welfare services being made by this invidious Con-Lib Dem coalition.

The candidate elected by the full membership of Southampton Labour Party, Rowenna Davis, is now working very hard in the community on many projects, including the setting up of food banks and working in them. It is the ability to adequately represent a constituency that is important, and I am sure the lady has that “in spades”. She has great experience in local government as a councillor behind her. Many MPs do not come from the area they represent. Winston Churchill first got into Parliament for Oldham – hardly a local boy, seeing as he came from Oxfordshire.

It is difficult to see Messrs Thomas and Morrell’s stance in a balanced light. They are undoubtedly supporters of a fair and equitable society.

There is only one party that will work in that end, the Labour Party.

The coalition Con-Lib Dems, the perpetrators of the bedroom tax, the Atos inquisition on the disabled, four million people on zero hours contracts; the people who consider that the income of the five wealthiest in this country equals the income of 20 per cent of the population is a fair society, will never deliver it.

They stand ready, if given another five years in office, to administer the coup de grace to the welfare state. In that event, I sincerely hope Messrs Thomas and Morrell will not have cause to reflect on how much their actions contribute to that result.

Local issues are important, of course, but the bigger picture is the more critical.

They are just providing succour and support to the party that believes fervently in the adage “divide and rule”, the Tory Party.

MR D R SMITH, Southampton.