Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser
Labour leader turns focus to future projects
Conservative counterpart in exchange for the vital votes – which Councillor Logue dismissed as “illogical”.
The SNP leader turned down a role heading the new community safety and partnership committee, as well as SNP leadership of two local area committees, saying: “I will take no part in working with the Tories in North Lanarkshire.
“As the largest party, we wrote to Councillor Logue offering talks on an SNPLabour joint administration. They lacked the courage even to reply. Now Labour have a sneaky deal with the Tories.
“Our group is instinctively repelled by this and completely distances itself.
“We’re disappointed that despite winning the election, we’re not going to be involved in what we would like to have been. People ask why we’re not in power.”
Conservative group leader Meghan Gallacher said: “We haven’t entered any deals with Labour.
“The SNP ruled out any coalition or working relationship with us. We were deciding who we could work with, on a case-by-case basis, in the best interests of North Lanarkshire – a dysfunctional SNP or Labour who have formed administrations in the past.
“Had we not voted, it would have been utterly disrespectful to democracy.
“We won’t always vote with Labour or against the SNP. We’ll look at every decision and if the SNP put forward a great idea, we’d get behind it.” Jim Logue says his new administration was re-elected on its track record and has “ambitious”future plans,
The Labour group leader said:“We made a conscious decision from the start that we were going to talk about North Lanarkshire’s local services.
“It’s not about constitutional issues, it’s about house building, delivering for the elderly, the fact we’ve created 7000 new jobs.
“We have tremendous plans over the next few months, including through the City Deal, and I want to see a lot more investment in North Lanarkshire.
“Residents don’t care about all the nonsense that takes place in the council chamber – they only care about quality of services.
“Our residents will see a big difference in the next five years – I’m leading a team that’s very focused on quality services.”
The council leader added of North Lanarkshire’s first minority administration:“The days of the big monolithic parties are over, we aren’t going to go back to 40-odd Labour or SNP councillors.”