The local election campaign kicks off this week and, as always, there is a little extra surprise supplied by Crawley.

At the very last minute Crawley council’s very own invisible man, Mike Weatherly, has quit so there will be a by-election at the same time as the regular scheduled elections, and the other parties have to find an extra candidate at the last minute.

Its a nice tactic, and I’m sure we would have done the same. Its also just about the only thing Mike Weatherly has done where the main benefit is to someone other then Mike Weatherly. You do have to wonder why he bothered to stand at all last year if he was going to give up going to council meetings after a few months.

Speculation at the time was that he was rather hoping to grab the nomination for the Crawley parliamentary elections and had no real interest in Crawley council or his constituents except as the means to an end. Following that theory, now that the Crawley nomination has gone to Henry Smith and Weatherly is lined up for a Brighton seat there is no need to keep up the pretense any more so he is off.

Delaying his departure until the eve of the local election campaign is about the only selfless act he has committed, but even there the beneficiary is only the local Tory party and certainly not the Furnace Green voters.

Other councillors have found their circumstances change after taking office and have had to move away or work away, but in this case I get the impression he has always been an absentee councillor, qualifying by owning a property here, but still living on the coast. The real shame is that its not even that far away – we have had councillors living or working hundreds of miles away who still managed to attend more meetings.

It looks like the voters would have been a lot better off with Eugene after all – as we all knew they would. I spoke to him tonight; he is vaguely amused by the goings-on.