I wasn’t planning to write anything about the August Council meeting but given that others who don’t know the facts are simply filling in the blanks themselves and inadvertently misrepresenting the decision we took to relinquish our leadership roles, I thought it was best that I spend some time setting out the rationale for our actions.

Since the Council Elections in 2022, we have seen two SNP Councillors resigning the whip and serving as independent councillors, but continuing to support their colleagues in votes, as they are entitled to do.

This left the SNP with 7 councillors but still supported by their two colleagues who were unhappy with national decisions.

It came as a complete surprise to me and the other Labour councillors when two of our colleagues unexpectedly resigned, as there had been absolutely no indication that they might do anything like this.

This meant that the administration had lost its overall majority in advance of the council meeting.

So we had reduced from 12 councillors down to 10.

As well as this we had the added complication of a by-election following the successful general election campaign, reducing us further down to 9.

At the August Council, despite saying they wouldn’t ever support the SNP our two former colleagues voted for an SNP Provost.

They then supported the SNP on all the political reports for decision on the Council.

It was abundantly clear that the SNP had made a bid for power when they took the provost position, which has the casting vote at council.

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It was evident that allegiances had been made and we couldn’t rely on the independents to get a Labour budget through.

We would be doing all the work, only to fail at the final and most important hurdle, at the budget setting meeting.

This has not been easy for any of us, and we have been torn because of our sense of duty to our constituents, our loyalty to council staff, and our concerns about the long-term viability of the council if the SNP took control but were unable to take the tough decisions to balance the budget.

Our expectation was that the SNP Alliance would follow through with their power grab.

We respected that they had the numbers and announced our resignations at the Council meeting, and formally stood down from our leadership roles on September 12.

We immediately requisitioned a council meeting and requested a discussion with the new SNP leadership to try to get the matter resolved.

Neither the SNP group nor the Labour group have enough votes to get a budget through on their own.

We need to find a way to work with each other to deliver.