A week or so after the event, the local[*] Tory party website finally caught up with the defection of one of their councillors, and the subsequent change to the balance of power.

First of all, Marcella Head’s name has disappeared from the list of their councillors, but there has also been a very subtle change to the front page. It now says:

Conservatives took control of Crawley Borough Council in the elections of 4th May 2006. This was the first time in 33 years that Crawley Borough Council had been Conservative controlled. We are now carrying forward our core policy programme built around the six key themes in our manifesto.

I think the words in bold used to be “is” and “has”. So in strict semantics it is recognising that they no longer have an overall majority, but not making it too obvious to anyone who didn’t know that already.

I wonder… if they had shown that much subtlety and tact in dealing with each other, maybe they would still be in control. There was an interesting letter in the local papers this week from an ex-Tory councillor who obviously had such a bad time in that group that he still has enough ill-feeling to stick the boot in 15 years later.

* – I say ‘local’ but despite the URL, note that the organisation is the Horsham & Crawley Conservative Association and not the other way round.