Why Edinburgh council’s SNP leader Adam McVey is wrong to label overtourism critics as extremists

Adam McVey branded people who oppose his views 'extremists' (Picture: Ian Georgeson)

There is an old adage that when you find yourself stuck down a hole you should stop digging. So why would SNP council leader Adam McVey choose last week to up the ante in the debate on overtourism in Edinburgh by branding those who challenge his stance and policies as extremists?

It mirrors his attack last year on those who criticise council failings as “Twitter trolls”. But you might have thought by now that he would have learnt that attacking the concerned and engaged electorate is not the best way to win people over. I’ll say nothing about the irony that this railing against “extremism” comes from a Nationalist politician whose party regularly fails to criticise a hard underbelly of their own supporters who are happy to berate the third of Scots who vote Conservative as “Tory Scum” and demonise them as “English” to “other” them.

What I wonder is, why the behaviour? The more I ponder, the more I consider it is all to deflect the debate from some home truths about poor council performance and unpopular council policies. On tourism, we have the SNP claims to be listening to those who are concerned about our heritage and life for city centre residents, but their actions fail to live up to the words. At a recent committee one SNP councillor tried to claim the new Council Tourism Strategy was their way of limiting numbers. This was quickly contradicted by the chief executive who confirmed to me that – strategy or not – tourism in Edinburgh will likely grow three per cent every year for the next decade. This same councillor had led the opposition to proposals to revamp Marketing Edinburgh to manage our “destination” rather than promote it.

Cllr Iain Whyte is the leader of the Conservative group at Edinbrugh City Council

Meanwhile, the SNP’s own Housing Minister has admitted he is “very disappointed” with his colleagues’ failure to tackle the problem of homeless families being housed in temporary accommodation. Coming from their own party that’s a pretty damning indictment of a failure to meet a statutory requirement. The scandalous truth is that the number of families affected is growing despite a pledge to end this practice completely.

Leading this SNP-run administration can’t be a comfortable place with the council budget approaching and almost £40 million of cuts to be found. The long-promised financial strategy is still invisible. And even their policies – designed to buy off the trade unions – of “no compulsory redundancies” and “no outsourcing” are being questioned by council staff in internal consultations. The staff realise the salami-slicing cuts imposed in place of a strategy simply damage the service to the public.

Interestingly, local Labour Party members are now telling their councillors to ditch the coalition with the SNP because they realise Edinburgh is being badly served by their obsession with independence and consistent underfunding of our Capital city services. Don’t expect Labour to sort things out, though. Their leader has far more pressing things to do sorting the rather farcical travel arrangements as he heads off to a conference of developers in Cannes to promote Edinburgh in the spring. It’s just a shame last year’s conference brought very little by way of tangible results for the £50k of taxpayer funds spent.

Having considered things in the round it is maybe no surprise that we have a council leader who is keen to go to war with the city centre public on Twitter and in the newspapers. It is much easier than taking the necessary steps to sort out the day job.

Cllr Iain Whyte is the Conservative group leader at Edinburgh City Council

Why Edinburgh council’s SNP leader Adam McVey is wrong to label overtourism critics as extremists – Iain Whyte