On Steven Purcell

Steven Purcell is not a man who I have very much time for. This is no reflection on him personally, it’s simply a reflection of the abysmal and arrogant manner in which the city was run during the time I lived there and when he was leader of the council.

It’s one of the reasons I decided not to comment when he suddenly announced his resignation more then a week ago. The other was that the reasons cited sounded rather euphemistic – in the same vein as ‘spending time with his family’ – but I wasn’t going to let my own bias against Mr Purcell and his council needlessly colour positive comment of the day, not least because damming someone who is potentially suffering from mental illness is far from the decent thing to and I would much rather see him make a recovery.

Now, of course, a number of revelations have come out about Mr Purcell. The main two being that during part of the time he was leader of Glasgow City Council, Mr Purcell had a dependancy on a Class A drug and was warned by Strathclyde Police about interactions with gangsters and potential blackmail. I imagine that life cannot have been particularly pleasant for Mr Purcell during this time, with comments from “a friend” in the Sunday Times painting a picture of a frightened and paranoid man rather then the Bright Young Thing of Scottish Labour.

It would be easy to make political capital out of all of this, but I’m not entirely sure that would be in good taste. I also don’t think that Purcell’s actions will have wider repercussions for Scottish Labour – after all, the Labour vote in Glasgow is very firmly embedded, despite previous scandals involving gangland figures and corruption.

What I am going to say is that I’m left extremely disappointed and angry by Purcell’s actions. Scotland has a poor international reputation in many ways – a history of high murder rates, high violent crime rates, poor diet and massive use of drugs has left a legacy which is largely borne by Glasgow City and the West Coast. As the bright young thing in charge of Scotland’s largest local authority, Purcell should have been helping to stamp out this reputation – moving the city as a whole away from it’s “No Mean City” reputation towards the council’s “Scotland With Style” tagline. Instead he’s fulfilled a stereotype , damaging the city  and allowing the media to smirk about those violent, drug-taking Glaswegians and Scots.

True, Mr Purcell did help to win the bid for the 2014 Commonwealth Games, but I wonder how much better that money could be spent providing public services and improving housing in the city rather then being handed to Rangers and Celtic for the use of their stadia. Hopefully there will be some wide spread regeneration as a result of this, but with budgets likely to become ever tighter as 2014 approaches, it seems likely that people of Glasgow are going to suffer for the sport.

I doubt there will be any long term changes in Glasgow politics as a result of this affair, but I am likely being overly cynical. At least the City Council in Glasgow is no longer a one party system, so while the majority is still held by Labour, it is at least held accountable by the other parties within the city. Hopefully, in time, this will lead to a more open, more transparent local authority rather then the Labour boy’s club which recent events have highlighted.