Just 35 weeks until the next council elections: Can the SNP hold Glasgow?

Leader Susan Aitken came under intense pressure during an STV interview in which veteran broadcaster Bernard Ponsonby branded the city “filthy” and pressed her to find another adjective to describe it. That’s amidst countless headlines about rubbish on the streets and dumped at underpasses and the launch of a “Glasgow rat register” by GMB Scotland over the “city’s waste crisis”.

That’s on-top of community campaigns to save libraries from closure and trade union action over job cuts in the arm’s-length external organisation (Aleo) that runs these and other culture and sport assets, Glasgow Life. Covid closures slashed that Aleo’s income and a £100 million-per-year boost from the council hasn’t been enough to make the numbers add up.

The administration’s had a number of tricky sums to do, with changes to Scottish Government funding costing it an annual £270-per-head since, according to Scottish Parliament figures. That is, researchers said, “the greatest reduction in real terms revenue funding per head between 2013-14 and 2019-20 for a wholly mainland authority”.

A recent article in The Spectator questioned whether Aitken is “the worst council leader in Britain”. Glasgow MSP Sandesh Gulhane (above) criticised her over local roads when sharing a picture of himself mid-calf in a pothole. And after the STV interview, in which Aitken said “patches of the city need a 'spruce-up'”, writer Darren McGarvey suggested “Susan Aitken begins to make more sense if you think of her as a performance artist in the mould of Andy Kaufman”.

So it’s no wonder that rival parties sense an opportunity, with Labour seeking to claw back seats lost in the 2017 drubbing that saw them lose power after 80 years and the Tories trying to capitalise on gains that year. Both parties have flooded social media channels with material slating Aitken’s team in recent days.

With more than six months to go until the May 2022 local government elections, can the SNP hold on to the administration in Scotland’s biggest city?

Writing for the Sunday National, Councillor Greg Hepburn (below), one of Aitken’s most trusted colleagues and Glasgow City Council business manager, defends the party’s record – and accuses Labour of “decades of mismanagement” that have caused today’s problems: “In 2017 there was a historic power shift in Glasgow which turned national election victories and popular support into local authority success. When the SNP first won power in Holyrood the Sottish Parliament was eight years old. When we won power in Glasgow there had been one-party control for the majority of the past 80 years.

“We knew the task at hand would be huge but no-one could have predicted the sheer scale of reform required to reflect the needs of a functioning 21st century city, a council equipped to address the challenges of climate, shifting demographics and now Covid.

“The old story is that Gordon Brown’s chief secretary to the Treasury left his successor a note stating ‘I’m afraid there is no money’. Well, Glasgow Labour didn’t leave us a note – they left us a multi-million pound bill.

"We walked into a culture of discrimination against low-paid women fixed by a previous Labour leader and maintained for a decade by his colleagues. Already this has a £500m price tag. The women had to have justice delivered and we did that. But the bill for Labour buying off support at the expense of women will cost us £30m a year for decades. Does this make a difference to what we want to do? Of course it does.

“We inherited a sometimes tangled web of Aleos. In particular, Cordia required a light to be shone around the corners of its governance. Bringing Cordia and Community Safety Glasgow back into the council wasn’t easy but it was a pledge and an expectation from staff and has allowed greater scrutiny and control. Why is this important to the public? Because they can now have vital frontline services they can have faith in.

“One policy the SNP administration can take huge pride in is the early implementation of the Holiday Food Program. Glasgow had tens of thousands of children going hungry during the school holiday and nothing was ever done to address that.

“A clear and obvious need Labour ignored as they feathered nests and pandered to vested interests. Our investment over four or so years has provided food and activities across the city that has been a rounding success and still going strong. We extended free school meals to P4’s ahead of the national roll out and made sure that our nurseries could provide free early years education to more children for longer hours than anywhere else.

READ MORE: Glasgow council leader Susan Aitken hits out at Labour's Keir Starmer

“The rate of house building in the city under the SNP is night and day compared to past administrations and we have had a real focus on areas of the city that had previously been abandoned to dereliction.

“Across the north of the city there are numerous new developments underway. Sighthill, the largest urban redevelopment project in the UK outside of London, will be wonderful but it’s just the start of the renaissance of the north of the city which has progressed since 2017. From Easterhouse to Drumchapel there are new social and affordable houses being built to improve communities and tackle the decades of neglect these areas have had inflicted on them. Much of this has been done during the biggest peacetime crisis in living memory and that is a real testament to the huge talent of our staff which has in many ways been allowed to flourish with a change in corporate attitude.

“What’s on the horizon and what can we offer the citizens of Glasgow in a second term? Cop26 has the potential to be a defining moment for our city – more than the Year of Culture and the Commonwealth Games.

“But its what we do with our host status which is important. We’re already working with partners across industry and academia to ensure our citizens have the skills for a new economy, that we’ll attract the jobs our profile has given us, that we’ll push on with making our streets and communities better places.

“Glasgow is changing and the world is changing. We’ve got the plans, relationships and opportunity to ensure Glasgow is the city it deserves to be. We’re hugely optimistic of good news on our ongoing plans for a Glasgow Metro, a new transport mode with new routes and destinations connecting citizens to jobs, learning and social opportunities. This has been our project and we’ll hopefully see that materialising in the months ahead.

“There’s no doubt that this has been a tough first term, dominated by a pandemic and addressing decades of mismanagement that left us with services that didn’t reflect the needs of a modern city.

“And we have faced sectional interests intent on derailing the first pro-Independence administration in the city in generations.

“But we have the vision, the talent and the commitment to our citizens and their needs within our group to really push forward with Glasgow’s transformation into a modern European city that its citizens can be proud of.”