Quantcast
Channel: For Argyll » political damage
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 2

Russell now calling for second Council Leader’s head

0
0

Earlier today, local SNP MSP, Michael Russell paid a visit to Argyll and Bute Council’s HQ at Kilmory in Lochgilphead for a show down with Councillor James Robb, Leader – the second Leader in under a year  – of the SNP administration of this council.

Mr Russell’s stance is reported as being: ‘Stop the Struan Lodge closure or I’ll take you down.’

This latest intervention makes the SNP group of councillors who are the leading group in a coalition administration no more than the personal fiefdom of the local SNP MSP – who was not elected to that responsibility.

The issue of Struan lodge care home in Dunoon has been mired in misinformation from all sides. It has become a trial of strength between two successive elected Council Leaders and a claque animated by the local MSP, representing the same political party but not elected to this sphere of government.

Despite this, Mr Russell has behaved in a highly interventionist manner since the SNP group emerged as the largest in the council at the 2012 local authority elections.

This proprietorial relationship has been wholly negative. It has achieved nothing constructive for his own party, nothing at all for Argyll and it has left the party unelectable in Argyll and Bute.

This situation saw off the party leader elected in the run up to those elections, the honourable Councillor Roddy Cuish who became Leader of the Council when the group emerged as capable of forming an administration with the help of other councillors. These are the Argyll First group, the Argyll and Bute Independent Councillors’ Group and some equally respected individual independent councillors.

The SNP group of councillors has been seen to be:

  • weak, incapable of genuine government of Argyll and Bute
  • willing to take orders from a party source not elected to that position of power,
  • unable to work constructively as a team
  • riven by internal conflict – however engineered externally
  • unable to deal with senior council officers proven to be incompetent and manipulative
  • unable to test evidence for recommendations put to them by officers
  • unable to take hard decisions and stick to them
  • unable to consider the bigger picture of responsibilities to Argyll as a whole
  • longing for the irresponsibility of opposition
  • betray their coalition partners whose quiet sense of responsibility has been impeccable.

While there are individual members of the SNP group of councillors who do not fall into this raggle-taggle category, every one of them is tarnished by this debacle.

As a party, they have absolutely no grounds to defend this catalogue of collective  incapability – and that damages the good and the able amongst them as much as the manoeuverers.

They have let down every one of us who voted for them, believing that the SNP would deliver better for Argyll.

The reality is that it has not delivered at all. It has obsessed on internal divisions and party politics. It has not once put the needs of Argyll first.

The MSP who has promoted this collapse has put his own perceived electoral interests before those of his overall constituency and before those of his party – at local and national level.

He may find Argyll and Bute rather more discriminating at the next Scottish Election than he imagines it will be.

The damage from this reaches far beyond Argyll. The national party has let this situation run unhindered. Worse, it appears to have fostered it. The latest rumour is that the party has given permission to a councillor to vote against his party group this Thursday.

Who in their right minds would see this shambles as a party of government to be entrusted with a fragile independent Scotland in a sea of uncertainty driven by promises and hopes and with no sound economic anchor?

They literally could not even run a local council, with plenty of breweries in the territory to choose from.

If it all collapses on Thursday – and we’ll be elsewhere, watching a capable local business in a major development which deserves to exist in a well governed and go-ahead council – it really cannot come soon enough.

This charade has gone on too long already – and if the SNP retire into the relief of opposition, no one should listen to a single word they utter from that position.

They had their opportunity. They were given that opportunity by hopeful and trusting voters. They showed they couldn’t do the job. They have no basis therefore for telling others how to do it.


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 2

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images