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Not sure if it was a milestone, or even a signpost, but Cornwall Council leader Alec Robertson went down to his first defeat in a full council vote this afternoon.

Mebyon Kernow's Dick Cole successfully defeated Alec's proposed ammendment to a resolution calling on the government to set up a special commission to investigate systemic structural underfunding of public services in Cornwall, particularly education and health.

Alec had preferred, as an alternative, a form of words which simply encouraged Cornwall's six coalition MPs to keep up their good work of drawing the underfunding to the government's attention. He lost by 42 votes to 34 and saw 4 members of his cabinet voting against him.

"It was a free vote; I won't be losing any sleep over it," Alec tells me.

"I'm quite pleased," says Dick. "A commission will underline the point that Cornwall doesn't get its fair share."

This is a story which we'd planned to run on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio Cornwall in the morning but which has been squeezed out, for now, by the 2,000 job losses which the council announced later in the afternoon. I think the plan is to run a report on Thursday, but if there isn't room I'll try to post it on this blog as soon as I can.