I've got two votes on 6 May. Only one of them will be for a Liberal Democrat...

So, the candidates for the County Council and Police and Crime Commissioner elections on 6 May are known. And here in Creeting St Peter, which falls within the Stowmarket North and Stowupland division, it looks like we've got an interesting contest. I'll come back to that in a moment though.

The Police and Crime Commissioner contest sees four candidates enter the fray;

• Elizabeth Hughes (Labour)
• Tim Passmore (Conservative)
• Andy Patmore (Green)
• James Sandbach (Liberal Democrat)

As it's an AV election, my first preference is an easy one - I'll be voting for James, obviously. As for my second preference, it will be a question of Green or Labour, if I choose to cast it.

Frankly, I'm sure that Tim Passmore is a decent enough person, but his record as Police and Crime Commissioner is mediocre at best, and I suspect that he only got the nomination as a consolation prize for not getting the candidacy in Central Suffolk and North Ipswich. He's certainly not as bad as some other Conservatives holding similar positions elsewhere, but can we do better? Of course we can.

However, if James doesn't win, are either of the other candidates good enough to be worth entrusting the county's constabulary to? To be honest, I don't know yet, having heard nothing from them, so we'll see.

The County Council election is a different kettle of fish though. The incumbent Conservative councillor, Gary Green, has been our representative since 2008, when he squeezed home by 53 votes against a strong Liberal Democrat challenger. Since then, he's been elected pretty comfortably, albeit on relatively low turnouts - 25% in 2013, 26.5% in 2017.

His primary opponent, again, is Keith Welham, one of the Green District Councillors for Haughley and Stowupland. Highly respected in Creeting St Peter during his four years as our District councillor before boundary changes separated us from Stowupland, he'll hope to do better this time than he did in 2017.

The third candidate is Will Howman, a Labour Town councillor in Stowmarket, although I suspect that he's there to make up the numbers - Labour have been little more than background noise in Mid Suffolk for some time now, with no presence on either the District or the Mid Suffolk delegation to the County Council.

There isn't a fourth candidate, which means that, in this instance, I can't vote Liberal Democrat... again. In the 2019 General Election, the Liberal Democrat candidate was stood down as part of the national deal with the Greens. This time, I don’t know why we aren’t running a candidate. 

On the plus side, this does mean that I can organise an online hustings for the village with a clear conscience, as I don't have a dog in this particular fight, and I've already invited all of the candidates to join me on 21 April for a night with Creeting St Peter. Hopefully, they'll come.

So, who wants my vote?