INSIDE TRACK: Pursuit of transparency before race for votes

AS some early SNP electioneering goes it was an open goal. Pledging to leave no stone unturned while probing the workings of the country’s biggest council is, in practice, a fairly standard expectation for any prospective political administration.

But such are attitudes to “town hall bosses” in this part of the world, there was little need for nuance. The perception, if not the reality, that something might be rotten in the state of Glasgow is a handy platform to present yourself as a candidate for change.

Here is an irony though. Should the electorate return an SNP administration in nine months’ time, some of the spade work may already have been done by the current Labour incumbents.

In the coming days the findings of a review into how the city council projects itself to the outside world via its public relations operation will be presented to the authority’s leadership. Carried out by former BBC journalist John Morrison, its very genesis is a symptom of the issues which routinely dog it.

(With Glasgow’s former spin chief Colin Edgar himself a former BBC journalist, “moved” by his political bosses, and yet another ex-BBC reporter – communications boss and PR troubleshooter Bob Wylie – already on the payroll, why pay an outsider for advice?)

But Glasgow illustrates an image and practical problem for local government beyond the city’s boundaries. Across Scotland in the coming months, communications professionals will come under heavy pressure to deliver election victories for their political bosses with endless streams of good news, while stemming the bad.

With often a paucity of positive stuff, unrealistic expectations of media management from various masters and narratives already long set by decaying regimes, this is quite a task.

And as the message they are paid to promote becomes conflated with perceptions of their own personalities, survival for the civil servant spinners could be a balance between corporate detachment and batting for the politicians. As regimes change, some babies will undoubtedly be lost with the bathwater.

There are deeper problems too. Satisfaction with local services is, in the main, high. Communities are precious about their local schools, parks or care provided to the disabled or elderly.

But put a corporate brand on it and up go the hackles. According to one recent study remote, bogeymen councils take decisions behind closed doors for their own purposes and are unresponsive to their citizens. The stereotype of the pale, male and stale councillor and brown envelopes might be on the decline – but it still exists.

No review of council media output will alter deeply-rooted perceptions of local government and its leaders this side of May. Minds are already made up despite what is said about winning.

Mr Morrison’s Glasgow report might have a lot to recommend it. It might point to the need for the bottom-up public engagement the city has too often lacked. Whether the beneficiaries are those who commissioned it, we won’t have long to wait and see.

‘‘ Across Scotland, communications professionals will come under heavy pressure to deliver election victories