Calls for Edinburgh Council Leader to resign
Edinburgh Council Leader Cammy Day is facing calls to resign, after Labour failed to pass their budget
Edinburgh’s council leader is facing calls to resign after an extraordinary meeting where he failed to pass a budget and one of his councillors quit – branding Labour’s spending plans ‘confusing and misleading’.
A Liberal Democrat budget was passed in a shock vote which saw Green councillors voting tactically to allow Labour’s proposals to fall in the first round of voting.
The defeat raises serious questions for the minority administration over whether it can continue running the council – especially given they are now left with one fewer councillor.
READ MORE: Shock as Lib Dem budget passes in Edinburgh, after tactical vote
The budget that was passed means council tax will be increased by 5%, with the average household paying an extra £68.94 over the year, under the Lib Dem plans which were supported by Labour and the Conservatives.
The approved budget also reverses most of the proposed cuts and sets aside an extra £11m for repairing roads and potholes, £3m for street cleaning and fly tipping, a further £3m for parks and greenspaces – and puts an end to the council’s commitment to making no compulsory redundancies, saving £600k.
SNP group leader Adam McVey said it had been a “disastrous” day for Labour and urged council leader Cammy Day to resign.
“Had I lost my budget as council leader I would have handed my resignation to the chief executive,” the former council leader said.
“The council needs leadership it can have faith and confidence in. If an administration can’t pass its budget then by definition the confidence is not there to sustain that decision making.”
However Councillor Day said he was “still keen to lead the capital city”.
He added: “It was disappointing to see Greens and a Labour councillor vote with the Conservative party to effectively make the Labour administration budget fall, and that was unexpected.
“We’ll be having discussions with all the parties over the next few days to see what they want to do going forward.”
Failing to set a budget wasn’t the only headache for the council leader at the City Chambers meeting on Thursday (February 23), having earlier seen one of his group’s councillors quit mid-meeting in a quite extraordinary intervention.
Ross McKenzie, who was already suspended from Labour for breaking the whip last year, said much of the administration’s budget was “designed to confuse and mislead” and he had been “isolated from the budget process”.
He said: “I know how little work the administration has put into this budget. That could be down to personal failings but it’s also down to the political reality of the need to leave space in their motion to accommodate the priorities of the Tory party.
“When I sit down just now I will resign from the Labour Party.”
Cllr McKenzie said he would work with others as an independent councillor to “make this city a fairer place”.
The resignation takes the Labour group down to 12 members – which means that even with the support of the Liberal Democrats, who stand to gain an extra seat at next month’s Cortorphine/Murrayfield by-election, they would not have a majority.
Kevin Lang, Liberal Democrat leader on Edinburgh Council said he didn’t expect to see his budget passed but said he was “delighted” that it would avoid £5m cuts to education, £370k to speech and language therapy and save the Taxicard scheme from being scrapped Cuts to pupil support and funding for additional needs support will still go ahead as planned however.
Cllr Lang said: “We put forward what I thought was the best budget for today, it was a budget that avoided £5m of education cuts, we’ve invested £11m extra into roads, more money for parks and greenspaces and also one of the lowest council tax rises.”
He said Labour’s position is “a matter for the leader of the council” and added he had no aspirations to lead the local authority in light of the day’s events.
During the six-hour meeting at the City Chambers on Thursday many councillors remarked it was the most difficult budget they’d ever had to deal with – having grappled with a £76m funding gap.
Conservative group leader Iain Whyte, who has spent nearly 30 years as a councillor, said: “I’ve been at a lot of budget meetings and this is probably the most usual one I’ve ever attended.”
He said he couldn’t remember any other year where an administration hadn’t been able to set a budget and added: “If the Labour party are going to continue as the administration then they’ll probably have to look at a slightly different approach to how they do things and the way things are agreed.”
He said Green councillors “played politics” and “caused chaos” by splitting their votes between the Tory, Lib Dem and its own joint budget with the SNP. This meant Labour’s motion fell at the first hurdle.
However Cllr Alys Mumford, Edinburgh Greens co-convenor said tactical voting was deployed to “ensure that there was a budget left on the table which contained vital climate spending”.
She added: “Our priority throughout this process has been to secure the funding needed to tackle the climate and nature emergency. Our method for this was to engage, openly and honestly, with colleagues across the chamber, and to join with the SNP to present an ambitious, progressive budget.
“Last night it became apparent that Labour’s administration had done another dirty deal with their coalition partners in the Tories and Lib Dems – creating a slush fund and allowing them to carve it up between them.
“We’re grateful to our colleagues who held their noses and voted to the tories and the lib dems – at great personal cost – for the sake of meeting our climate commitments.”