No wonder the Liberal Democrat brand colour is yellow

Given that Councillor Thornley’s other job is a member of the Scottish Lib Dem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton’s staff, his bar might be set rather low, but it is indeed a great privilege and honour to be elected to Edinburgh City Council. But done properly it can come at a cost. Few people would put in the kind of shift required of councillors to get even just the basics of the job right – helping constituents, reading thousands of pages of reports, night and weekend work with no time off in lieu – for the available allowance of just over £25,000 if it meant giving up other better-paid work.

Lib Dem victor Kevin McKay makes his speech after the Fountainbridge/Craiglockhart by-election result was announced

Nobody should enter politics for the money, but be motivated by the desire to make things better for the voters who place their trust in you. I know my old business suffered because I needed to spend so much time on council duties, especially at the height of the campaign to save Currie High School. The responsibilities only increase in administration, but that’s what everyone who stands for election should be aiming for, because you can achieve an awful lot more in power than in opposition.

But after recent by-elections put Edinburgh’s Lib Dem group in position to take control of the city council, they have shown a marked reluctance to express any enthusiasm for so, instead just saying they will take the summer recess to think things over. Cllr Thornley used his column to tell readers how well-known his new colleague Kevin McKay is in Craiglockhart, not how he was looking forward to heading a new administration after the summer as the leader of a 14-strong group.

There was nothing about putting Lib Dem priorities, whatever they are, at the top of the council’s agenda, as Lib Dem voters are be entitled to expect. Not a word of what he and Cllr McKay are actually going to do.

In truth, they seem to be little more than a disparate collection of community activists whose purpose is to prop up a lame duck Labour administration, force Labour to accept some of their local budget ideas, accept no responsibility whatsoever for the subsequent outcomes and sit on the fence whenever possible.

A perfect illustration is the treatment of their Edinburgh West MP Christine Jardine, sacked from her front bench position as equalities spokesperson last week because she defied party orders to abstain over a Conservative amendment to reduce some benefits. I would have rather she had not voted against the motion, but at least she had the courage of her convictions and got off the fence.

Unless something changes, they will have conned voters into believing they were voting for a Lib Dem-run council but instead got some shady puppet regime operating under cover of darkness. The electorate expects the winner to take the spoils but to do otherwise, to hand them back to avoid accountability for the difficult decisions authorities must take, is an act of gross political cowardice or cynicism. Neither is a good look. No wonder the Lib Dem brand colour is yellow.

Sue Webber is a Scottish Conservative MSP for Lothian