07/06/2017
COUNCILS have been taking shape over the past few weeks.
For the first time ever the SNP is in control in South Lanarkshire but only because a weak and divided Labour group allowed it.
The thing about councils is that they should be free to do their own thing.
You elect local councillors to take the decisions they think is best for their local area.
No party has a majority in any Scottish council, so parties have to work together.
It’s what’s happened in South Lanarkshire for the past decade.
Before the council elections, the SNP announced that its councillors were barred from doing any coalition deals with the Conservatives.
It would have been an unlikely alliance anywhere and I can’t see any of my party’s councillors being interested anyway.
Then, Labour – a supposedly unionist party – told its councillors that they needed permission from Edinburgh before any coalition deals with the Tories would be approved. They did not say the same thing about the SNP.
Their group in Aberdeen decided, rightly, that what they do for Aberdeen is nothing to do with Kezia Dugdale and went ahead with a pact with the Conservatives. They have all been suspended from the party.
Labour in South Lanarkshire is a bit more complicated. It’s been split from top to bottom, from left to right.
They could have talked to the Tory group and formed an administration that would have kept out the Nationalists.
Instead, they sat on their hands.
That sort of cowardice would shame some of the Labour councillors who have gone before.
Had former council leader Eddie McAvoy still been there he would not have stood for such nonsense.
We have now seen a number of resignations of Labour councillors from the party and even a couple – East Kilbride’s Jim and Sheena Wardhaugh – from the SNP.
It makes the group of independents a curious mix.
So, the SNP is running the show here for now. They don’t have a majority so could lose any vote.
Which gives councillors more power than they’ve ever had.
A barmy proposal from council officer to scrap the successful cycling partnership which I started in 2014 was knocked on the head at the first meeting of the full council.
I had spoken to people in all the major parties about this and they were horrified.
Working together is going to have to be the name of the game from now on. Without interference from Edinburgh.