Kevin has stepped into my favourite job - Ed Thornley
As Edinburgh Council goes into recess in the summer there can be a feeling of running towards the finish line, as councillors and officers look forward to holidays with family or just a break from the cycle of committee meetings.
Rarely is the ‘last day of term’ as tense as it was this year. On 26 June, voters in Fountainbridge/Craiglockhart ward went to the polls in a by-election no-one wanted to fill the seat held by the late Councillor Val Walker.
I sat on the committee Val convened, Culture and Communities, and she was my friend.
Campaigning in her ward, with the knowledge of how we came to be there, was a very strange feeling. Val was a campaigner to her core and we often swapped stories of the surreal world that is doorstep campaigning.
Often by-elections that follow death are less contentious than those that follow resignation – especially when the person who has died was so widely respected. This was no different.
Even at the count, as onlookers craned their necks to see the vote tallies rise, there was an air in the room that everyone had given it a good try and a fatalism of sorts that it was now out of all our hands.
Ultimately it was my party’s candidate, Kevin McKay, who emerged victorious.
Fountainbridge/Craiglockhart has not elected a Liberal Democrat since 2007. We came fifth in the 2022 local elections. Our vote share nearly tripled, and we leapt to second place on first preferences, before overtaking Labour at the final stage.
Kevin has been a member of Craiglockhart Community Council for the past eight years, and even at the start of the campaign, people said to me ‘Oh yes, I know him’.
That’s a rare thing indeed. If we are honest with ourselves very few councillors enjoy that kind of name recognition, even after a few years in the job.
For now, as councillors and staff turn to the summer and perhaps head away with their families, let me simply say – welcome Councillor McKay, you’ve just started in the best job I’ve ever had.
Liberal Democrat councillor for Drum Brae/Gyle