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With only four days of the election campaign behind us (although in reality it’s been much much longer) yesterday saw the first formal step with the close of nominations for the council elections.

Efficient as ever I received confirmation of my nomination from Wandsworth today, the full list of nominated candidates will be published on Monday. You will notice (for convenience as much as anything) my wife acted as my proposer! I think it’s as much because she likes having the house to herself most evenings while I’m stuck at the Town Hall.

I was also alerted to another dodgy Lib Dem bar graph by a comment in response to my post. This time it was for Graveney ward, the only ward that can be considered a three way fight (the gaps between the parties are less than 200 votes) I couldn’t find a digital copy of the leaflet, but managed to find a very similar looking one that appears to be the same proportions. Using the Lib Dem vote as the benchmark you can’t help but notice that they understate the size of both the Labour and Lib Dem votes.

An Islington Lib Dem activist contacted me after my first post to point out that since they don’t have any labelling on the Y axis it’s all fine. I’m not sure if they were being serious or not.

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I recognise that reports of meetings I attended are dull. Frankly, they are dull for me. Last night’s full council was a classic example of why.

I have a lot of time for the Labour Party in Wandsworth, I think they have provided some good opposition to the council, but actually, that’s mainly come from their leader, Tony Belton. Without him, I don’t think there’s any doubt they would not be much of a force. Last night’s debates largely proved this.

At the previous council meeting (which was only to set the council tax) their arguments were “Yeah, Lord Ashcroft”. Nothing to do with the council, and nothing to do with council tax setting. Last night, they developed a new line of attack: “Yeah, Mark Clarke.”

Rather than debating council policy they spent more time trying to attack a Conservative Parliamentary candidate than anything else. A sign, perhaps, that they are worried about the Tooting seat?

We did try and debate Tooting. Sadly Rex Osborn, a Tooting councillor, could offer nothing better than saying everything good in Tooting was because of the residents and businesses, and everything bad because of the council. Our problem, it seems, was that we are too heavy handed with enforcement, except when we aren’t because then we should be heavier. And we don’t have any vision, because if we did, we’d be encouraging more people to go to the bingo hall. And we’re not clairvoyant, because he had photos of problems which we subsequently had to clear up.

And that was the corker. Like a Liberal Democrat on Glum Councillors he had a series of photos where rubbish had been dumped or the pavement blocked, which the council had to clear up. The complaint was not that the council didn’t clear the problems, but that the problems existed in the first place – and here he conveniently forgot the residents and businesses good, council bad line. Perhaps hoping we’d all think the council has been dumping mattresses or re-arranging shop displays.

I’ve repeatedly said that the real strength of Tooting Together is the together element. We clearly rely on residents and businesses to keep pavements clear and not to litter or flytip – but when the minority (and it is a small minority) step out of line we will act quickly to rectify the situation. To try and spin the whole thing in the way Labour did shows they are out of ideas at exactly the time they need them.

If that is the best Labour have to offer, it can hardly be a surprise that they are worried about losing to the Conservatives, and maybe even to the pothole pointers of the Liberal Democrats.