Edinburgh's Craigentinny-Duddingston by-election is a chance to pass judgement on failed SNP/Labour coalition – Miles Briggs MSP

Has Edinburgh become a better place to live and work since the SNP-Labour coalition running Edinburgh City Council took over control in 2012?

Conservative MSP Miles Briggs explains why he thinks voters in Craigentinny and Duddingston should back the Tory candidate (Picture: Greg Macvean)

That’s the question voters in Craigentinny-Duddingston ward will be asked to decide on November 12.

Readers will need no reminder of the many scandals which have dogged the council and which have appeared on the front page of the Evening News over the last decade.

From ignoring its own rules and allowing the vast Christmas Market in Princes Street Gardens, to the shameful burning of Princes Street memorial benches, to cuts which SNP-Labour councillors are making to vital local services, to the introduction of the traffic schemes across the city without any proper consultation with residents and businesses, and the social care crisis facing the most vulnerable in the Capital. The list of scandals and failings is long and depressing.

For nearly a decade the SNP-Labour coalition running Edinburgh City Council has ignored the wishes of local residents. It is little wonder that many communities feel totally let down and abandoned by this council.

One example is the loss of the 69 bus in Craigentinny, a move which has had a significant negative impact on local residents. The removal of this lifeline bus service without any consultation was totally unacceptable.

I have been campaigning alongside Craigentinny/Duddingston Councillor John McLellan and local campaigner Eleanor Price to see the reintroduction of a local bus service.

For too long communities across Edinburgh have been taken for granted and local residents are told to accept what they are given. We desperately need a council that listens to local residents and fights for what they actually want – not what the administration says they should accept.

After a lost decade, the SNP/Labour coalition running Edinburgh City Council has failed to make progress to improve the Capital and, perhaps more concerning, seems to stagger from one scandal to the next.

Perhaps what is most concerning is how the Capital is now seen. Edinburgh has so much potential, we should have a leading local authority, demonstrating how people’s lives can be made better, an efficient council delivering the quality local public services we all rely on.

We need a council that focuses 100 per cent on local people’s priorities and starts the work needed to restore the Capital. It’s about good local services for communities, not gimmicks and wasting local taxpayers money.

Increasingly people across Edinburgh realise we need to see change and a new administration to take control in 2022. It was therefore hugely welcome and refreshing to read the comments of Evening News columnist and well-known SNP supporter Helen Martin, who stated “I would vote nationally for SNP but prefer Edinburgh’s Tory councillors who are more representative of locals and logical rather than foolish and tyrannical”.

Helen is not alone, as local residents across the Capital know, it is local Conservative councillors who get things done. What is now important is that we work to ask voters across Edinburgh to lend their support to the Conservatives to deliver that change in 2022.

There are now just 18 months until the council elections. Edinburgh Conservatives are working hard to present that positive alternative to the failed SNP/Labour coalition running the council.

Local voters in the Craigentinny-Duddingston ward will be the first to have an opportunity to pass judgement on this failed SNP-Labour coalition. I hope local voters will lend their vote and support to my friend and local campaigner Eleanor Price. It’s time for change in Edinburgh.

Miles Briggs is a Scottish Conservative MSP for the Lothians

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