FOLLOWING unpopular decisions made by City of York Council, there has been widespread criticism that the regime ignores the wishes of residents.

The response has been staunch Labour supporters insisting they can do as they please because they were voted in at the last elections.

Labour did indeed secure more seats than all other parties in May 2011, but it is not true that they received an overwhelming endorsement from the electorate. In total Labour received 20,297 votes but 43,897 citizens voted for another party or individual – more than twice as many. The turnout averaged 45 per cent.

To put this in context, for every 100 people entitled to vote, only 14 voted Labour, while 31 voted for someone else and 55 did not bother to vote at all. As a share of the total electorate the Labour vote was just 14 per cent and since they came to power a number of lifelong Labour voters have declared they will never vote for them again.

So far from having an unequivocal mandate for its actions, the regime is pushing ahead with unpopular programmes on a support base of a only a fraction of the overall electorate.

John Jones, Sand Hutton Manor, York.