For Argyll has seen records of conversations with Argyll and Bute Council’s SNP Council Group Leader, Sandy Taylor, which took place at the end of May 2013.
Mr Taylor was asked who exactly were the then current members of the SNP Group of Councillors.
The answer was five and possibly six.
The five were:
- Mr Taylor himself, representing Mid Argyll,
- John Semple from South Kintyre;
- Richard Trail from Helensburg South;
- James Robb from Helensburgh Central;
- Louise Glen-Lee from Oban North and Lorn;
- and possibly, although then uncertainly, Isobel Strong from Bute.
Ian McCann, the SNP NEC’s National Compliance Manager [AKA rules watchdog], had ruled unequivocally that a member of the SNP Council Group rescinds membership of that group [but apparently, not necessarily of the party] on joining another political grouping.
In the conversation in question, Mr Taylor then referred to this official ruling in explaining why some elected as SNP Councillors could not now be members of the SNP Council Group.
He said that any who had signed to join Argyll and Bute for Change – the current mixumgatherum administration led by the returned Council Leader Dick Walsh – could not be members of the SNP Council Group, that Ian McCann had confirmed that they could not be.
He went on to allege that Cowal Councillor, Gordon Blair, had signed to join Argyll and Bute for Change on 17th May 2013; that former SNP Council Group Leader, Bute Councillor, Robert Macintyre, had signed to join that same group on 21st May 2013; and that Bute Councillor, Isobel Strong, who had been negotiating with Argyll and Bute for Change might not have signed by the date of this conversation later in May 2013.
Mr Taylor is then reported to have alleged that Kintyre and the Isles’ Councillor Anne Horn was to meet with the Argyll, Lomond and the Isles group [part of the Argyl and Bute for Change compendium] on 27th May; and that Councillors Roddy McCuish and Mary Jean Devon, both of Oban South and the Isles, were committed to leaving the SNP Group.
We understand that Councillor Horn remained with the SNP Group, which would have brought it to seven members then; that Councillors McCuish and Devon lost their SNP Group membership in joining Argyll, Lomond and the Isles; and that Councillor Blair, who is alleged to be a member of Argyll and Bute for Change, yet continued also to attend SNP Council Group meetings, in defiance of the party rule but without objection – lists himself as an SNP councillor and presumably retains his party membership?
Councillor Robert MacIntyre holds a senior post under the current Argyll and Bute for Change administration – as Chair of the Bute and Cowal Area Committee; and lists himself as an independent. Councillor Isobel Strong had been negotiating to join the same group on condition that she was given the Provostship that she had held under the previous SNP-led coalition administration. This failed to materialise, offered to the current Provost, Len Scoullar, a long time member of Councillor Walsh’s grouping of independents. Councillor Strong’s continuing membership of the SNP group is therefore a default choice, since, had she got the Provostship, she had intended to be off.
Assuming then that she is indeed still a member of the SNP group, the list of seven group members above at the end of May 2013 [including Councillor Horn] – itself down from the thirteen who were elected as SNP councillors in May – is now down to five.
Councillors Glen-Lee and very recently, Semple – members of Councillor Taylor’s list above, have resigned and stood down from the Council.
This Thursday, 23rd October 2014, will see the second running of a by-election to elect a replacement for Councillor Glen-Lee in Oban North and Lorn [Ward 5]. There is as yet no date for the by-election in South Kintyre.
Flexible rules and voter betrayal
The departure of the two SNP councillors above took the list of more or less pukka group members down to five today.
Or is it six?
Councillor Iain Angus Macdonald, elected as an Independent in Oban North and Lorn in May 2012, was moved in the latter stages of the recent independence campaign to join the SNP. He then declared himself to be an SNP Councillor.
As we understand it, SNP rules for those wishing to represent the party require prior membership of the party for a period of around a year; and that they should undergo vetting procedures. Both requirements appear to have been waived in the case of Councillor MacDonald.
Party rules may also have been applied or parked with apparent discrimination, depending on whether Councilllor Gordon Blair remain a party member, appearing to be a member of two council groups, which the rules flatly disable.
Councillor Roddy McCuish was twice an SNP-coalition leader in the year 2012-13 and twice the victim of the external SNP party hierarchy in its deliberate serial torpedoing of three of its own administrations at Argyll and Bute Council in that short time. [Councillor James Robb was the other Council Leader flared off by his own party, in his leadership of a SNP coalition between Councillor McCuish's two administrations.
What on earth, an innocent night ask, was the SNP party doing in deliberately taking a wrecking ball to its own administration leaderships, when they had been entrusted by the electorate to bring reform and integrity to Argyll and Bute in a serious score for the party in Scottish local government?
Ironically - since Argyll later voted against independence by 58% to 41% - this exercise in self mutilation and voter betrayal was done in order to protect the independence vote - then well ahead - from the impact of any unpopular but responsible decisions a new and straightforwardly honest SNP-led administration might take. The party forced three SNP-led administrations to fail by documentedly instructing SNP councillors to vote against their own party's Council Leaders; and in some cases, allegedly, to resign.
The SNP now face a serious deficit in local public trust, with many of their councillors having been seen to take instructions from the external party and to put the interests of that party above those of Argyll and Bute; and above those of voters who were not SNP supporters but who nevertheless elected them in hope for better.
And now they have Dick Walsh back again.
The last two of the original thirteen
With five remaining original group members today, two resigned as Councillors since May 2013, two more are now members of Argyll and Bute for Change, two more are now members of Argyll Lomond and the Isles - what happened to the other two of the originally elected 13?
Councillor Breslin is understood to have lost his party membership in a confused 'strategic' resignation, was a member of the current coalition but has been sacked from it by Council Leader Walsh in circumstances redolent of the bad old days the electorate had hoped to change by voting in an SNP-led coalition in May 2012. He had refused to sign 'the Leader's Protocol' - a blanket gagging cause demanded by Council Leader Walsh and which Councillor Breslin rightly regarded as anti-democratic and which is of questionable constitutional propriety. He now claims no political affiliation, not listing himself as 'independent'.
Councillor Fred Hall resigned from the SNP, as a councillor and as a party member. He continued for a while as an independent councillor, later outside the current administration and outside the minimal opposition group of the remaining SNP council group; and later stood down from the Council, triggering a by-election in Oban South and the Isles [Ward 4]. This was won by Labour with Neil MacIntyre, that party’s first councillor in Argyll and Bute since 1999.
Councillor Hall had both local and national reasons for his resignation from the SNP. He was embarrassed by the manufactured and externally enforced collapse of the SNP group elected to usher in reform. As a former senior police officer, he was also viscerally opposed to SNP Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill’s determined attempt [continuing] to remove the requirement for a successful prosecution to present corroborating evidence. Mr Hall, as a professional insider, was concerned at the impact of this on the security of justice in cases brought following police stop and search activities, since another intended Police Scotland change was to allow single-officer police cars to operate. Moreover, Mr Hall was concerned at the stability of justice in cases arising from allegations of domestic violence and sexual crime – which are as notorious for the difficulty of acquiring corroborative evidence as they are for mischievous or misconceived allegations.
