Michael Blackley: City’s main players vying to make up the numbers

BATTLE is about to commence in the contest for political control of the Capital. Voters will go to the polls in just a few months in an election which will decide who takes charge at the City Chambers for the next five years.

Unusually, every one of the five main parties will feel they have a strong and realistic chance of forming part of the coalition that will be in charge following local elections on May 3.

It will be only the second time that the more proportional “single transferable vote” system is used to elect the councillors who will represent the city and, in sharp contrast to 2007, this time round all the groups – with the notable exception of the SNP – have accepted already that it will be a coalition, rather than a single party, that will form the administration.

They will each campaign for as many votes and seats as they can win but, ultimately, they know they will have to rely on winning the support of not just the electorate but also some of their political rivals if they are to gain a position of power, meaning that it could be a coalition of any hue that assumes control. The buzz phrase at the moment for politicians in the City Chambers seems to be that they “won’t rule anything in or out” as far as who they will team up with.

Councillor Jeremy Balfour, leader of the Conservative group on the council, which did not embrace the new system in 2007 and found itself largely on the fringes as a result, admits things have now changed. “No-one has put up enough candidates to win the election alone,” he said. “We will end up with a coalition and that will make it a more interesting election. It is a numbers game and it’s all about how you can get to that magical 30 to become a majority.”

For the last five years, the Capital has been run by a coalition of the Liberal Democrats and SNP that has been widely criticised for cuts to front-line services and a lack of leadership on key issues such as the tram project and splits on a range of controversial topics.

However, during the Scottish Parliament elections last year, when the SNP swept the board in Edinburgh, the unpopularity of the Lib Dems locally and nationally seemed to benefit the Nationalist vote. The SNP is already the favourite to win the largest share of the vote and, if it again picks up traditional Lib Dem votes, it raises the prospect of the same coalition running the city again, albeit this time with the council leader and Lord Provost more likely to come from within the SNP.

Deputy council leader Steve Cardownie, who is said to have his sights set on becoming Lord Provost, with economic development leader Tom Buchanan the favourite to become leader, is not currently willing to consider what sort of coalition will run the city – and has not given up hope of actually winning a majority. The SNP has only selected 23 candidates at present, which is six short of the minimum needed to rule as a majority, but he said it will review the situation closer to the election and it does have more candidates waiting in the wings.

“There is no denying the fact we’ve got a hugely successful SNP government that got a majority even although the system is against that happening,” he said. “And we have been the junior party in a coalition that has won plaudits across the country. We will stand on our record. We are not taking anything for granted and will fight for every vote but we’ve got a good team of seasoned candidates.”

However, the opposition groups are likely to use the record of the existing coalition as a key part of their election campaign and will urge voters not to let the same parties run the city for five more years. Cllr Balfour said: “If we ended up with the same people shuffled around that would not be good for Edinburgh and would leave us with another five years of a lack of leadership and a lack of coherent policy.”

Based on the current make-up of the council, a “rainbow coalition” of Labour, SNP and Green would be enough to have a comfortable majority of 31 councillors – and the likely increase in the Nationalists’ vote could well open up the possibility of Labour and SNP having enough councillors to form their own administration.

In the Scottish Parliament, it would be almost unthinkable for such a coalition to be formed, but at a local level they do seem to be better suited, although strong rivalry between ex-Labour councillor Steve Cardownie and some of his former Labour colleagues could prove a stumbling block.

Councillor Andrew Burns, leader of the Labour group, is more than willing to consider an alliance with the party’s old foes like the SNP and Tories. He said: “I am ruling nothing in and nothing out and the decision rests with the electorate of Edinburgh. It’s up to them who can form the biggest group.”

In 2007, it took nearly a week for a coalition agreement to be signed, and there was even a lengthy delay after the 2010 Westminster elections, despite it not even using proportional representation, before a coalition was formed. That new style of politics means that, while an SNP/Lib Dem or SNP/Labour alliance appear to be the frontrunners for the next coalition, we will probably be no nearer knowing that the day after the election than we are now.