More allegations of bad behaviour in the increasingly dysfunctional City of Edinburgh Council once again demonstrate the Ethical Standards system needs a dose of common sense or scrapped altogether, writes Herald columnist John McLellan.

What a time to be a member of the Labour Party. You wait all these years to get a sniff of power and in the space of a few months the party’s reputation is up in smoke, vapourised, in ruins or whatever metaphor you can find for collapse.

Ah yes, collapse, as in moral as well as morale. All those years of frustration accompanied by the sure and certain sanctimony that if only you were in charge standards in public life would be so much better;  Labour memories, unlike those of Boris Johnson and Nicola Sturgeon, would not need to be sieves because theirs were so much purer in the first place. Dudgeon was rarely less than skyscraper height.

And now reality has bitten. Never mind a policy programme steered with all the precision of a clown car on a skid pan, there has been the jailing of the Runcorn MP Mike Amesbury, the shaming of Peter Mandelson over his seemingly unbreakable friendship with a notorious paedophile, ditto the MSP Pam Duncan-Clancy and newly-ennobled Lord Matthew Doyle and their continued association with paedophile Moray councillor Sean Morton, and close to home there’s dear old Cammy Day, the former leader of Edinburgh Council, whose penchant for visual self-marketing on dating sites knew no bounds. Certainly not of probity.

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I’m sure in time the list will go on, and indeed it has, albeit with an ex-Labour councillor, Ross McKenzie, now a member of the Edinburgh Greens, who is accused of treating a member of council staff in a “sexist and derogatory manner” at a Liberal Democrat Christmas party in the City Chambers. We have Cllr Day to thank for the spotlight turning on Cllr McKenzie, although in the very murky circumstances of a complaint to the Ethical Standards Commission under cover of a bogus name.

The whole lurid affair was aired once again at a furious meeting of Edinburgh Council last week in debates about the incidents and standards in public life, from which no-one came out well. Labour leader Jane Meagher’s impassioned defence of Cllr Day tied with the SNP’s indignant Lesley Macinnes for the performative prize; Cllr Day was a “liar and a manipulator”, said Cllr Macinnes, while the SNP’s pursuit of their former coalition partner was, said Cllr Meagher, “relentless bullying and persecution.”   

That Cllr Day has behaved inappropriately AND be the victim of a political conspiracy isn’t an option either side is prepared to accept and the saga has rumbled on for so long the Edinburgh public could be forgiven for being past caring. Admittedly, the Day affair doesn’t compare with the ongoing national scandals, but, as SNP Councillor Stuart Dobbin correctly pointed out, voters are losing trust in politicians and all are being tarred with the same brush. Of course Cllr Dobbin didn’t mention the SNP’s truckload of bitumen – MSPs Mark McDonald (inappropriate behaviour to women), Derek Mackay (inappropriate messages to a 15-year-old), Michael Mathieson (£11,000 expense claim for football streaming), Neil Gray (ministerial limos for drink-fuelled attendance at football matches). I could go on.

There are more good eggs than rotten apples in each party’s barrel, but the common denominator is usually inadequate responses to allegations of misconduct, be it internal discipline or external codes designed to moderate behaviour. Nationally, the application of the Ministerial Code is a running joke, but the latest shenanigans in Edinburgh City Chambers have once again exposed the inadequacies of the Ethical Standards Commission (ESC) system.

Let’s be kind and accept Ethical Standards Commissioner Ian Bruce only applying the rules, not setting them, but in the cases of both Cammy Day and Ross Mckenzie the serious allegations didn’t even reach first base because he ruled they were not acting as councillors at the time of the alleged incidents.

The public might think a councillor accused of pressuring Ukrainian refugees into having a tryst required full examination, but not the ESC which reckoned it was all a private matter. And the public might think a councillor invited to a political group’s Christmas drinkie-poos in the City Chambers and allegedly making sexist comments to a member of council staff wasn’t just there like any random off the street. But that’s how the ESC viewed Cllr McKenzie.

Meanwhile, councillors like Glasgow’s Fiona Higgins asking legitimate questions in public about the actions of officers or, in my case, challenging a politically-loaded report, are put through the mill of a full investigation and public hearing.  Common sense is in short supply, and at least both sides in the latest tawdry Edinburgh episode agree the Ethical Standards system is not fit for purpose.

Meanwhile, some common sense seems to have made its way into Edinburgh City Chambers, with this week’s decision not to include extensive borrowing for the £31 million plan to remodel George Street in the programme for spending the expected £50 million annual Tourist Tax revenue.

But common sense has its limits and the plan to put tourist tax money into the housing budgets could fall foul of the legislation, because the direct benefits to tourism are tenuous in the extreme, and it could trigger legal intervention. Using the cash to fund the police is dangerous too.

It’s the result of negotiations between the SNP and Lib Dem groups, which left the puppet minority Labour administration with little choice but to go along with it.  Voters can expect more of this after the May election, where the Lib Dems are already in position to work with the Nationalists, and an SNP-Lib Dem coalition in Edinburgh could be the outcome after the 2027 council elections.

It makes a mockery of the Conservative group’s continued support for Labour’s tenure in charge simply to keep the SNP out. Vote Lib Dem, get SNP.

John McLellan is a former Edinburgh Evening News and Scotsman editor, now director of the Scottish news publishing trade association, Newsbrands Scotland. Brought up in Glasgow, McLellan has lived and worked in Edinburgh for over 30 years, and was a City of Edinburgh councillor for the Scottish Conservatives from 2017-22.

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