Who is Edinburgh’s secret Machiavelli? – John McLellan

Who could possibly have started a rumour that when Edinburgh Council’s SNP-Labour administration pulled the plug on Marketing Edinburgh, the previous board left the company in an unstable financial position?

The board, chaired by Edinburgh Airport’s marketing chief Gordon Robertson, resigned en masse last year when the council decided to withdraw funding and take some functions in house, and a new three-person board of SNP Councillor Kate Campbell, Labour’s Mandy Watt and the Greens’ Claire Miller was appointed to wind it up.

Now one ex-director, Lord Provost Frank Ross, has written to the new board to ask them to scotch any suggestion he and his colleagues acted improperly.

“The previous board resigned… after Committee had rejected the fully researched plan of the board and stated that no more than £100,000 of council funding would be available… as against the £350,000 required to deliver the board’s managing tourism plan,” he wrote.

The old board, he added, “can categorically state that at the time of their resignation the Company was on a sound financial footing, all of which was fully documented”.

Cllr Ross asked for “the correct facts” to be made available, but how has such scuttlebutt arisen?

In whose interest would it be to trash the reputation of the previous board, including recently retired National Museums director Dr Gordon Rintoul?

Someone who wanted to pretend closure was the only option? To make it look like the few employees the Council will retain were actually saved by their benevolence?

No, I can’t think of anyone that Machiavellian.