IT was a standing joke on slow days at the Edinburgh Evening News to ask the news editor if there wasn’t a really interesting story about Cosla we could splash, instead of the tedious rubbish on the newslist. The joke was, of course, that there was nothing more boring than councillors talking about councils and we tried not to lead a side column on the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, never mind the whole paper.
So while not denigrating in any way the valuable work of that fine organisation at a time when local democracy is being eroded by Scottish Government centralisation, I couldn’t help but smirk when the subject of Cosla membership came up at the Edinburgh Conservative group meeting earlier this week.
Before becoming a councillor I was well aware of the amount of unexciting but very necessary procedural work which goes unreported so that all the important stuff can happen. If you are a political journalist you can forget about the things which will never cross the editor’s boredom threshold but as a councillor it’s your bread and butter.
So in the age of proportional representation where authorities and governments rarely find themselves in absolute control and where very little is straightforward, the lawyerly command of procedural detail is essential. Throw the complication of a General Election into the politics of it all and the result, as we are seeing across the country, can be limbo. In Edinburgh where no two parties except the SNP and Conservatives can form an administration – and the First Minister has made it clear that ain’t happening – the one party everyone agrees got a pasting, Labour, actually holds the aces.
The complexities are such that just the appointment of office bearers and committee conveners will take two meetings of the full council, a short meeting last week to elect a Lord Provost (and to pass an urgent motion about a low-emission pilot scheme which was only urgent in case Glasgow got in first) and another one today to appoint a council leader and committee conveners. That is, once (or if) there is agreement on what committees there should be and how many councillors should be on them. And it might only be temporary until the election is out the way and Labour doesn’t have Ian Murray MP holding up its responsibility payments by unhelpfully claiming only it can stop the SNP.
The poker game of who aces whom for convenorships and committees is important but matters not a jot to the general public and why should it? They just want whatever they don’t like to be better, and having just had an election they want it better now.
Take last week, when a large group of poverty protestors filed into the public gallery and the corridor outside the debating chamber, for the full council. As the group outside sang to disrupt the debate, it wasn’t clear what they wanted, but as soon as the meeting adjourned they erupted in anger. “Shame on you” they shouted at bemused councillors as they filed out, who were then met by the now furious hallway choir giving more of the same, including a twenty-something with metal through his nose complaining about the disgrace of “Youse wi yer chains”. (Not guilty, it’s the SNP chap you want…) Another woman screamed: “We voted you in and we can vote you out,” and as she didn’t sound like a Tory I concluded it wasn’t my lot she was after; in fact their anger was directed at people they knew, apparently even to the extent of refusing an offer to meet their ward councillors there and then to sort out their grievance. The whole thing seemed pointless.
So today if anyone else feels the urge to berate their representatives for attending to necessary detail, remember the boring stuff has a purpose and revolutions rarely solve anything. The Americans have been at it since 1783 and they got Donald Trump.
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