Sir – James Robertshaw, the UKIP candidate for Witney South in the district council elections, puts some of the blame for his failure to win a winnable seat down to the weather (last week’s Gazette) without producing evidence to support the claim – a bit like the wrong sort of leaves on the line tale.
The truth is that not enough of the electorate was willing to vote for him, which may be attributable to the well-funded party machine of the winning Conservative candidate, the completely legal, but dubious, postal voting system introduced by Tony Blair in 2001 – a system which UKIP has yet to get to grips with.
The fact that it was only the second time that UKIP has contested a local election on any scale in West Oxfordshire could also be a factor.
Yet, in spite of all that, UKIP was just 152 votes behind, in second place.
David Barnby
New Yatt Road
Witney
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