Edinburgh council elects Labour's Jane Meagher as council leader to replace Cammy Day

Labour has only 10 councillors` out of 63 and one of them abstained, but Lib Dem and Conservative councillors backed Councillor Meagher’s nomination and her appointment was approved by 32 votes to 28.

Labour’s deputy leader Mandy Watt, who had to step in after Cllr Day quit, told the council meeting: “This has been a difficult and frankly damaging couple of weeks for my group and for the council. But we have the chance today to move on, to restore stability and get on with our jobs of running this city.”

And during the debate, Cllr Meagher - taking part remotely from Tanzania, where she is visiting family for Christmas - told the council: “My approach is to listen, learn and drive positive change. I am by nature a consensus builder, I’m willing to take on board other views, willing to compromise and willing to take the the of decision that will help the people of Edinburgh, particularly those most in need of our support. I think that’s the kind of leadership we need.”

The SNP proposed a coalition between themselves and the Greens and they circulated copies of their coalition agreement to all councillors ahead of the meeting.

SNP group leader Simita Kumar said if Labour was re-elected, it would mean further uncertainty, chaos and insecurity. She said the proposed SNP-Green coalition was progressive and gender-balanced. “We have the capacity, capabilities, the skills and the talents to do this.”

Green councillor Chas Booth said the coalition would offer “fresh and bold leadership” after two and a half years of “directionless drift”.

A Conservative bid to delay the election of a new council leader until February, after a by-election to fill two vacancies on the council, was defeated. But two Labour councillors - Leith councillor Katrina Faccenda and City Centre councillor Margaret Graham - both supported the Tory call.

Cllr Faccenda also abstained rather than vote for Cllr Meagher as council leader.

She said there were principles which councillors were supposed to observe, the first of which was selflessness, defined as not allowing political interests to stand in the way of good governance.

“I have heard in the two and a half years since I have been a councillor, within my group and in other parts of the council, repeated expressions and demonstrations of people who did not apply selflessness to the way they did their job. If you say something like ‘I did not stand to be in opposition’, you are not displaying selflessness - and you’re also undermining the very role of councillors, which is to represent their wards.

“We in the Labour party have a further duty - to represent the people our party was founded to represent. And we have failed in the last two and a half years. We have failed to promote core Labour values and principles.”

And she said the electoral system had failed the council because it had allowed “people who put their own vanity, self-interest and ambitions to be seen as king-makers in positions of too much power”.

Cllr Graham spoke of being in a “Labour party concrete straitjacket”. But she said: “There is an opportunity to look at a different way to travel, look at taking away party politics and taking 63 people in a room who actually want to do the best for this city, not to have a political power grab because there’s been an opportunity. That would be the way forward if we were all realistic about the citizens of this city.

“I’m not the only person in this room who is conflicted, who has struggled at different times over the past two weeks, but personally over the past two years about some of the decisions I’ve had to support.”