Janet & I were at Edinburgh Airport last night to give our older son a lift home following his trip round Italy and Germany. The photo (right) taken at the airport shows a rather spectacular rainbow (and a second, more hazy, one). Sort of spooky, given all the talk locally about rainbow coalitions over the past week.I have deliberately kept out of all the waffle in the press this week about coalitions, who “won” the election and some of the, frankly, intemperate comment.
The position as my colleague Helen and I see it is straight forward. We agreed with our local party members that we would wish to speak with all three other political groups on the City Council – SNP, Labour and Conservatives. Having only 2 seats on the City Council and just over 11% of the first preference votes across Dundee at the 3rd May City Council Elections, we would not have huge lists of demands, but we would seek assurances that a number of issues important to our constituents were raised. These include:
- The need to properly address the serious issue of poor and unadopted pavements throughout the City.
- The need to properly tackle graffiti, in the City Centre and in local communities.
- The need for improved community involvement (as opposed to “consultation”) on local decision making.
- The need for more efficient decision making in the City Council; less committees, and a modernised structure. Personally I like the Cabinet model; many do not (including many in my own party elsewhere in Scotland) but Helen and I agreed that a reduced number of Council committees immediately and cross-party consultation on the longer term model (including involving all parties on the Council looking at the ways other authorities organise themselves) was a sensible way forward.
- Continued priority towards low Council Tax increases (or no increase as we achieved this year). I’ve been Finance Convener over the past two years and keeping Council Tax increases low within the context of quality service provision was my priority. We don’t want to see this priority lessened.
Anyway, long story short, we met all three parties the Tuesday after polling day. All discussions were constructive, in all fairness.
However, whilst discussions with the Conservatives and Labour convinced us that there was general agreement on the sort of priorities we feel are important to our constituents, the situation with the SNP was less positive. The SNP representatives gave no convincing argument as to why their group has better policies and priorities than others. They indicated the SNP group was meeting the following night and they confirmed they had my mobile number for contact. We heard the square root of nothing further from the SNP until the following Monday. Meantime, “the party that does not do deals with the Tories” met the Conservatives and offered the Conservatives convenerships.
The Conservatives rejected the SNP offer. All of a sudden, last Monday, Councillor Guild was on the phone to me asking ‘how I felt about possible co-operation’. He seemed unable to give an explanation as to why there had been total silence from the SNP for six days and he claimed he had wanted both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats on board. The arithmetic on the Council tells otherwise.
I advised Mr Guild that, having read their manifesto, we could not support a group whose manifesto had very significant spending commitments that would inevitably result in a huge Council Tax increase.
There has been great “spin” in the press about who “won” the Dundee City Council elections. A letter in yesterday’s Courier from a Mr Leslie sort of sums up the misinformation (click on headline above to read full letter). He writes :
“Locally, the people of Dundee have spoken and decided by a majority that a particular party should run the council. For those who failed to gain that support yet still hijack the council is an absolute disgrace and tantamount to anti-democracy.”
Presumably he thinks Dundee SNP won the Council election. Err, well no actually. Unfortunately the facts get in the way of that assumption. So a few facts, folks:
· Dundee SNP gained less than 40% of the votes cast in the City Council elections (39.97% to be exact). So over 60% did not vote SNP.
· The Labour and Liberal Democrat partnership gained more votes than the SNP in the City Council elections. (40.67% to 39.97%).
· SNP group leader Ken Guild tells the press that the Liberal Democrats reaching agreement with the second largest group (rather than his own) is against the spirit of proportional representation. Presumably we are obligated to reach agreement with Mr Guild! Perhaps someone should ask Mr Guild then what he thinks of the second largest group on West Lothian Council (the SNP) reaching agreement with the Tories and others to form an administration, even though Labour is the biggest group?
· Or in Fife, where SNP and Liberal Democrats have formed the administration, despite Labour being the largest group?
Of course, the real rationale for any partnership agreement must be based on what we consider best in terms of stable administration and delivery of vital services. Helen and I are satisfied that is what we have achieved in terms of the partnership agreement with Labour, and it is interesting to note that, of the many constituents who have contacted me about the Council administration in the past few days, the vast majority are supportive of this stance. My goodness, they must be from the 60% majority of voters!