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Real loser is local democracy


By SPP Reporter



The local authority election count was held in Inverness and revealed just who the winners and losers were after the people had gone to the polls.
The local authority election count was held in Inverness and revealed just who the winners and losers were after the people had gone to the polls.

WELL Graeme Smith, that wasn’t so much a "monkey on [your] back" as a raging gorilla!

You said in your election leaflet that one day the full story of the ill-fated Caithness Heat and Power fiasco – sorry, meant to say scheme – over which you presided, would be revealed...

Well, it has! And the voters of Wick, who just a few short weeks ago you dismissed as "shallow" (perhaps, on reflection, not your wisest outpouring in the build up to an election campaign) have written that final chapter and pointed you firmly in the direction of "Brigadoon". Recognise the quotes? You should, they were all your very own.

"There was a touch of inevitability about it," you said after your defeat. How very true.

And so the political landscape in the Highlands has changed once more. Most notably as the SNP, the Lib Dems and Labour – a mishmash of unlikely bedfellows – have agreed to form a new administration in Inverness.

The backroom horse trading at Glenurquhart Road has incensed the independents who had hoped to play a leading role in the new council, much as they had done before. Is that to suggest they took local electors for granted? Had complacency set in? And without a party mandate what exactly do such a disparate bunch of randoms stand for anyway?

"People not politics" declared an independent Bill Fernie, who returns to the council chamber on a much-reduced first-preference vote. C’mon Bill, you can do better than that! Give us something tangible. Something real. Something in black and white – not grey imponderables. Something to measure your performance against...

AS with all elections there were winners and losers. The real loser, in my opinion, is local democracy itself. Only 31 per cent of the 5633 electorate in Wick bothered to turn out on the day. If it is truly about "people not politics" then by far the biggest majority of those people talked with their feet – as far from a polling station as their legs would take them.

"Increased wages for low-paid staff and a return to a localised decision-making set-up across the Highlands are expected to be key priorities of the new-look local authority", reads an online news report on the John O’Groat Journal/Caithness Courier website.

A senior independent councillor, Isobel McCallum, begged to differ. "It’s very sad day for the Highlands in that political parties who are diametrically opposed have come together to defeat the independents who the Highland electorate wanted to govern them."

Now how did the Black Isle councillor work that one out?

The SNP is the biggest political party in the Highlands representing 32 council wards (five more than their 2007 election result). The Liberal Democrats lost seven councillors (from 2007) down to 14, whilst Labour returned eight members.

Biz Campbell (Wester Ross, Strathpeffer and Lochalsh) has the dubious distinction of being the fastest political defector in British history by abandoning the Lib Dems within hours of the count...

NATIONALLY, after all the number crunching, it was a grim set of results for the Conservatives who took a mid-term pasting in England and Wales. Their Lib Dem coalition partners did even worse. Stand by for a back-bench Tory rebellion.

Cameron’s only redeeming moment – he may live to regret it – was the return of the bafoonic BoJo to City Hall. A potential rival leader in the wings? Certainly the prospect of other similar elected mayors was well and truly rejected by the voters across England.

In Scotland, the SNP secured a remarkable result for a mid-term government. It gained more than half a million votes, increased its lead over Labour and had the most first-preference votes of any party in Scotland.

It also returned the highest number of councillors – 424 – to Scotland’s councils.

The Scottish Liberal Democrats were humiliated. In Edinburgh one of their candidates lost to a man dressed as a penguin!

But it was not a night for the SNP to be wholly jubilant. Labour, after decades of power in Glasgow, retained majority control in "the second city of the empire". It seems Scotland is now a two-party state.

Across the country two-thirds of local authority administrations will have to negotiate some sort of rainbow coalition agreements in order to take control.

I UNDERTOOK an entirely ad hoc survey of local Wick twenty-somethings. None of the ones I spoke to bothered to vote. None of my three twenty-something daughters or their partners voted. "I don’t understand politics or who to vote for," seemed to be the prevailing view. "It’s not relevant to me," I was told.

Interesting that the BBC is running an "advert" – "Politics? What’s it got to do with us? Well, apart from the cost of the food we eat, the price of our heating bills, how often the streets get cleaned, what the minimum wage is, indeed, what the maximum wage is, the standards in our local care homes..." and so on.

The Westminster coalition Government has vowed to pursue reform of the House of Lords. That much we heard in last week’s Queen’s Speech. Is this a genuine attempt to modernise an archaic, feudal inheritance?

Elsewhere, until such times as we radically change the voting system not to vote our politicians in but to vote them out, we will continue to be lumbered by elected so-called representatives on their own personal or party missions – not ours.

It’s not such a fanciful idea either. Don’t you remember David Cameron and Nick Clegg in the midst of all the MPs’ expenses clamour promising to do just that?

That was only two years ago. Back then they needed your vote to get in power and then conveniently forgot about their election commitments.

As they say, a week is a long time in politics...

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