As of 12.15 this afternoon, the Argyll and But Council website is showing the following as the Administration in the political composition of the Council:
SCOTTISH NATIONAL PARTY GROUP (11)
William Gordon Blair
Mary Jean Devon
Louise Glen-Lee
Anne Horn
Robert E Macintyre
Roddy McCuish (Leader of the Council)
James Robb
John Semple
Isobel Strong
Sandy Taylor
Richard Trail
ARGYLL FIRST (3)
Douglas Philand (Ind) (Leader)
Donald Kelly (Con)
John McAlpine (Ind)
THE ARGYLL AND BUTE INDEPENDENT COUNCILLORS GROUP (2)
George Freeman (Ind) (Leader)
Robert G MacIntyre (Ind)
Iain Angus MacDonald (Ind)
Elaine Robertson (Ind)
Not having had reason to check this before, we have to assume that the noting of Councillor Roddy McCuish as Council Leader is recent and relates to his second occupation of that position, rather than his first appointment to it in May 2012.
The council itself has so far failed to reply to our request for information on the precise membership of the administration. However, we were finally able to get a little clarification on the reality of the composition of the administration last night.
Argyll First confirmed to us then that they are not members of an administration led by Councillor McCuish. This should not necessarily be read as any estrangement from Councillor McCuish. It was simply an answer to the specific question we had framed for the absence of doubt.
The council website will have been updated to record Councillor McCuish and not Councillor Robb as Council leader after the meeting of council last Thursday, 23rd May 2013.
At that meeting, SNP Councillor McCuish defeated Councillor Duncan MacIntyre of whichever group he was deemed to represent, by one vote in the election for Leader.
However, before that meeting Argyll First were no longer members of the administration led since then by Councillor McCuish. Yet the updating of the website did not include that confirmed situation.
If we set aside the other changes known to have been made before the council meeting- the resignations from the Administration and from the SNP group of SNP Councillors Robert E MacIntyre and Gordon Blair, of Councillor Iain Angus Macdonald – by the time of recording Councillor McCuish’s leadership, he was already leading a minority administration of 15-21, with the absence of Argyll First alone.
Without the three named above it would be 12-24.
And three more SNP councillors are now also said to have moved out of the SNP-led ‘administration’, making it 9-27.
The major issue here is not the endless shifting sands of the self-discredited SNP, which remains preoccupied with its own internal warfare rather than with the job of governing Argyll it was elected and trusted to do.
No one outside that benighted group and their political superiors whose interventions are primarily responsible for this chaos, is accountable for the situation – and today’s situation is unlikely to be the end of the story anyway.
The major issue is the fact that the Council, as a body, has not seen fit to make public the shape of the current administration since the council meeting of 23rd May at which Councillor McCuish was elected to lead it – whatever it was – but which was already a minority.
It would be interesting to know by what code it is mandatory not to inform the electorate that the council administration has failed – or by what authority it is optional to do so?
It is wholly unacceptable for members of an elected local authority to leave its electorate waiting for white smoke from Kilmory at some indeterminate point, to announce that we now have some sort of administration in place.