Ron Forrest would do better to spend his time addressing Beryl Siddons' legitimate concerns in last week's paper about the democratic deficit at Mendip than wasting it in the splenetic recriminations of an electoral Bad Loser.

David Heathcoat-Amory lost. Tessa Munt won. Get over it. Of course, he won't – any more than Geoff Coates or Carol Davies will. To all three I say, the solution rests with you, with your colleagues on Tory-run Sedgemoor District Council and with the executive which has taken three months to come up with precisely nothing to justify the tsunami of invective aimed at our MP.

Strange, huh? Why have the Tory majority there not pressed the chief executive for an early resolution of the matter if they are convinced it will justify their spleen? Could it be that in their rush to recruit the Mail on Sunday to their cause they went too far by raiding private files and now find themselves open to precisely the legal action Mr Coates suggests Tessa takes?

David Hughes, one of the men to whom Ms Cross refers, was amazed to have a confidential email to the council quoted to him by a Mail on Sunday reporter.

How could this have come into the man's possession except by precisely the kind of dirty tricks Ms Davies tries to lay at Garfield Kennedy's door?

I find it deeply ironic that Mr Forrest calls for a swift answer to a question which it is in his party's power to resolve without further delay, and that Ms Davies takes refuge in sanctimony ("it's time to concentrate on what actually matters in Wells, etc") to deflect attention from a vicious, partisan and almost certainly illegal smear campaign at the heart of our local government.

If Ms Davies, Mr Forrest and their fellow travellers truly want a return to business as usual then they should begin a thorough, objective and transparent inquiry into the conduct of their colleagues at Sedgemoor, and if it is found that they – or any council employee they may have persuaded to help them – have transgressed the local government code of conduct then they should face the same penalty they wish on Mrs Munt.

Christopher Inge Bleadney