A ROW has broken out between Glasgow council leader Susan Aitken and Scottish Labour MSP Anas Sarwar over the blunder that means a council by-election has to be re-run.
The North East winner, Labour’s Mary McNab, failed to resign from her council job and was then disqualified as a councillor.
Susan Aitken, the council leader, said that Labour should compensate the council for the costs involved – but Anas Sarwar said it's not Labour's fault.
It will cost around £80,000 to re-run the election and there will be extra costs for a KC to go to court this week to establish the law, and also time of senior officials in the few days.
A council source suggested the total cost involved could be as much as £200,000.
“One thing’s clear from all this though. The very people who believe they have a divine right to run this city – the Labour Party – couldn’t run a bath.”
Sarwar, campaigning in Kelvindale for another by-election in the city, hit back and said it wasn’t Labour’s fault.
He said: “The SNP might want to make this a political fight. They might want to talk about what happened in terms of their having to be another by-election.
“I think what Susan Aitken and the SNP should maybe focus on instead is actually running a competent administration.
“Maybe not wasting the council's money. Maybe fighting for a fair deal for Glasgow. There's a Budget this week. I hope she's arguing for a good deal for Glasgow. I suspect she's probably not. Maybe that should be a more appropriate focus for the council leader.”
McNab won the by-election last month and because she was also a council employee had to resign from her job the following day.
When she failed to do so she was disqualified from being a councillor as council staff cannot be councillors as well.
Sarwar denied the fault lay with the Labour Party or the candidate and suggested McNab was given the wrong advice by her employer.
He said: “Well, I think you need to speak to Mary McNab and speak about the conversations that she was having with her employer and the process that she was told to follow with her employer.
“And I think there's probably some discrepancies on the advice she was given by her employer and the process that they had followed, which meant inadvertently, that there was a situation we now find ourselves in.
“So, I don't think this one's on the Labour Party, to be honest. I think there is a wider administrative issue here, which sadly means we're going to have an election. But I hope can be resolved, so a similar situation doesn't happen again, for any political party to be honest.”
