Why should an able councillor, with the best interests of their local community at heart, be kicked out of office because voters want to register a protest over their party's handling of national issues such as the Iraq war?

Issues like Iraq should be determined by General Elections. Council elections should determine who is best placed to run key local services – schools, roads, libraries, care of the elderly, leisure facilities and so on.

However, as this year's campaigns gather pace, with the Tory launch yesterday, I believe that an exception should be made; one that would be in the interests of all.

Next month's local elections should effectively be a referendum on which of the main parties is best qualified to run the nation's finances – and provided some much-needed fiscal responsibility – at a time when the world is in economic freefall.

Why? The average worker, according to a newly-published economic analysis, now pays a mind-blowing £6.63 an hour in tax to the Treasury – a 5.6 per cent increase when compared with 12 months ago.

This sum is now greater than the minimum wage, one of this Government's flagship policies. It also includes 40p per hour for the council tax – Gordon Brown's favourite stealth tax when it comes to filling the increasingly deep black hole in his budget.

The steepness of this rise also fails to take account of fact that Britain has now entered a period of wage restraint in both the public and private sectors.

Yet, at a time when the cost of living is soaring, and millions of families are facing a foreboding future when their fixed-rate mortgage deals come to an end, what are our main political parties doing?

Are they facing up to the fact that Brown's decade of profligacy means that there is precious little money in the public purse to help the UK ride out any recession?

Not a bit of it. They're out there
on the election campaign trail promising to spend even greater
sums on an assortment of policies that may not actually deliver any tangible benefits.

Take two pronouncements this week which demonstrate, in my opinion, why the wider economic picture must take precedence over local needs – and how politicians must resist the temptation to spend their way out of trouble.

In response to the public's legitimate concerns about law and order, and New Labour's abject failure to be "tough on crime", Gordon Brown has promised a police officer in every neighbourhood who is contactable by mobile phone.

It's an eyecatching initiative at face value – until the policy details are stripped away. Bearing in mind officers only work eight-hour shifts, they will only be contactable for this period of time. What happens at night-time when they are off-duty?

It will cost local constabularies a small fortune to publicise these numbers, even more so when the local officer concerned is promoted, switches to another area – or leaves the force.

Such gimmickry also overlooks the fact that the numbers for local police stations are readily available in the telephone book.

Why does Brown have a mania for spending other people's money on schemes which would not be necessary if police forces had sufficient officers in their telephone control rooms to respond promptly and effectively, to calls from the public?

That's what the public would prefer rather than another half-baked, and uncosted, policy commitment.

Yet, I'm not sufficiently convinced that long-suffering taxpayers would be any better off under the Tories. They highlighted a dossier – The Cost of Living Under Labour – which revealed how council tax bills have soared in Leeds, even though the Conservatives run the city in conjunction with the Lib Dems.

And, while the key plank of their election campaign is a bold scheme to remove the 638 "worst" schools from town hall control, and effectively run them from Whitehall, I'm not clear where the money will come from to fund this initiative – especially as it will require the creation of another tier of managers.

Don't get me wrong. The need to raise school standards is fundamentally important. It's a national disgrace that so many young people do not have an adequate grasp of basic skills.

Yet, given how this Government has poured tens of billions of pounds into failing schools over the past decade, is throwing more good money after bad the answer? Shouldn't someone have the foresight to be asking how current money can be spent more effectively ?

David Cameron will argue he intends to do just this, and I do not doubt his sincerity. But the Tory leader will talk at length in his next sentence about the importance of political concepts such as "choice" – and the rights of individuals to choose the best schools or where they should undergo hospital treatment.

This is a very noble objective –
but "choice" means providing taxpayers with options that all cost money. Yet what voters expect is confidence that their local school, health clinic, sheltered housing scheme or leisure facility has the scope to meet their own requirements.

They do not necessarily want
more promises that add to the tax burden still further. Hard-working families can only afford to make so many sacrifices.

It is for this reason that people should be asking two questions to any candidates who actually canvass for votes for polling day; namely how they intend to improve services and precisely how they intend to finance their manifesto commitments?

It then places the onus on the parties, and candidates, to devise
a credible plan rather than plucking numbers out of thin air – one of
the reasons Britain's public finances are now in such a barren state,
and all politicians are held in so
much contempt.