Putting the wind up Labour’s shaky council administration - John McLellan

New city council minority leader Councillor Jane Meagher is going to need a hard hat to keep her disparate Labour group together

Announcing that high winds had put the kibosh on this year’s New Year festivities was the first significant duty for council leader Jane Meagher ─ apparently pronounced “Marr”, not “meagre”, although that was an apt description of her reluctant presentation at the last full council meeting.

And neither is the political weather favourable for a Labour group boss whose disparate group of ten look more like the survivors in a disaster movie than a team of crack administrators.

Cancelling Hogmanay may turn out to be one of the easiest decisions the Portobello councillor has to front, with the support of the Lib Dem and Conservative groups essential for a budget to be passed in February if her administration is to avoid plunging the council into a financial crisis.

To that extent she is effectively a puppet leader who will need to accommodate the demands of other parties if she is to continue, and in future council meetings there will be no hiding place as she must put a brave face on whatever deals have been struck, while coming under fire from fellow left-wingers in the SNP and Greens. Not to mention some on her own side.

For someone who lists opera and performing in choirs as her favourite pastimes, she’ll appreciate that even Gareth Malone couldn’t get this lot to sing from the same hymn sheet.

It was why her predecessor Cammy Day was so suited to the job because with a brass neck a plasma cutter couldn’t mark, political criticism was neither here nor there and it has taken personal scandal to bring him down.

Having only been a councillor for two and a half years, little in Cllr Meagher’s background suggests someone well-prepared for the horse-trading and dark politics involved in budget negotiations.

And it’s hardly a badge of honour that in her brief stint as housing convener the highpoint was the council declaring a housing emergency.

But who holds her to account is another matter, with the main opposition, the SNP group, having recently elected Cllr Simita Kumar as the new leader, someone who is just as inexperienced as Cllr Meagher.

Not that most readers will notice, politically speaking at least the council is now in a state approaching paralysis.

But that might, in fact, be good news for the new chief executive Paul Lawrence, who could have what amounts to a free hand to drive his own agenda in the absence of a strong direction or effective scrutiny from the politicians.

Whether that’s good news for the rest of us depends on your point of view, but don’t expect a slow-down of anti-car policies for anything other than a shortage of cash.

And even that that won’t stop the drum being banged for building a north-south tram line, even though the money or public support is notable by their absence.

There’s a long list of grand schemes which could do with going the same way as this year’s Hogmanay, but who knows what this attempt at an administration will seek to achieve. Other than self-preservation.