Edinburgh Council’s pot calls the Brexit kettle black – John McLellan

Imagine how difficult it must be for a minority administration to sort out a deal when it is propped up by a small party of just 11 members.

Adam McVey has described the impact of trams on the citys finances as a fake dividend

There’s got to be a bit of give and take and negotiations might go down to the wire, right to the very last minute to avoid crashing into a situation where No Deal means political paralysis.

At the time of submitting this article there was less than a couple of hours to go before the deadline, and less than 24 hours to go before a crucial vote and still no sign of the deal that would affect thousands of people.

Eagle-eyed readers will know this is not Brexit, not just because there is over a month to go before Departure Day but the DUP only has ten seats in Westminster. No, I refer of course to the SNP-led council administration kept in power by the 11-strong Labour group and today the coalition must present its proposals for a balanced budget with £33 million less to play with than last year thanks to the settlement handed down from the SNP in Holyrood.

By yesterday afternoon these allegedly amicable partners still hadn’t published their plans, with meetings going on into Tuesday night and yesterday morning to thrash out an agreement. The challenge of cutting £33m from the city’s budget is massive, so we have a degree of sympathy for the administration, but that sympathy ends at the scale of the challenge, not the choices the administration is making.

As the council was threatening to end the employment of qualified teachers in the city’s nurseries among many other unpalatable measures, it was also reaffirming its commitment to a tram project which becomes more hideously expensive by the day and which the leadership insists would have no impact whatsoever on the council’s ability to deliver services.

Working with a senior member of the city’s finance team, we in the Conservative group have calculated that the tram project has made the administration’s task about £90m more difficult than it needed to be. That is the amount which could be available to the council if it reinvested future receipts from the existing tram and bus network on anything except three miles of track through Leith, a project which, by the administration’s own figures, could cost £257m at today’s prices and who knows how much by the time the line opens sometime in 2023.

The administration leadership has become rather fond of describing criticisms as “lies”, particularly the SNP’s enthusiasm for a workplace parking levy, but sounding rather like Donald Trump, council leader Adam McVey described the impact of trams on the city’s finances as a “fake dividend”.

But when virtually every penny of future transport income is being diverted into this project, if it’s a “fake dividend” then what’s paying for the tram? And let’s just say the administration’s definition of “no impact” will be at variance with most dictionaries.

Our plans to keep council tax rises down and to end the Garden Tax, among many other proposals, will in all probability fail today as the Labour Group defies its membership to keep the SNP in power, but at least we’ll have shown there is an alternative.

And as for Brexit, from some of the council leadership’s social media posts you’d think all the UK Government had to do was is call Edinburgh City Chambers for the A-Team. At least there is still over a month to go before Britain leaves the European Union, but never mind renegotiating 40 years of international trade agreements and complex cross-border law, the administration team needed every second to sort out a council budget.

From a coalition which struggles to empty bins on time and is presiding over a shambles in health and social care, to describe the UK Government as “bumbling” is, shall we say, bold.