Star comment: Apathy is root of problem for uncontested Shropshire Council elections

Shropshire has become a "rotten borough" with seats on the council sewn up without any democratic process.

He is talking about the fact that in a swathe across the county in the Shropshire Council elections there will in fact not be any elections, but a coronation of candidates who will walk in to the role because nobody is standing against them.

The voters will have no choice and no electoral opportunity to pass judgment on the views and fitness for office of the councillors who are being waved in.

These walk-in councillors are Conservatives and are having a clear run because, in the words of Mr Hughes, Labour and the Lib Dems are not going through the motions of putting people up against them, the implication being that they are not bothering because they cannot see the point in contesting seats where they think the Tory candidate would win anyway.

"Our broken first-past-the-post voting system has turned swathes of the county to one party fiefdoms, which opposition parties simply won't touch," says Mr Hughes, deftly moving the focus on to the voting system itself.

It is not unusual for councillors to be co-opted on to parish and town councils. They are willing volunteers drawn from their communities and are acting in the spirit of public service.

But Shropshire Council is a unitary authority which can take decisions which shape the future of the county and impinge on the lives of all Salopians.

When important votes are taken in the council chamber, especially on contentious issues, how can it be truly democratic if the votes of councillors elected to office with a mandate from the ballot box can be cancelled out or defeated by the votes of councillors who have no electoral mandate whatever?

The lack of people standing is not just a matter for political parties, but for Salopians themselves, as local government is an area in which true independents have always played a valuable role.

This apparent apathy is part of a malaise in which people are not seeing politics as something that is relevant to them.

People can argue over whether the voting system itself is, as Mr Hughes says, broken. But it certainly is not being used as it can and should.