IT seems that I have upset my old friend Tom Tracey (‘Council leader should say sorry for SNP ‘cult jibe’, Postbag, June 5).

Tom refers to the abuse that politicians receive online and in the media. If he had received the amount of abuse, threats, and intimidation that I have received over the last 10 years from supporters of Scottish independence, many of whom say they are members of the Scottish National Party, simply for being a member of the Labour Party and a supporter of the union, he might consider it to be cult like.

Regarding the council tax freeze, not one SNP council leader, including the leadership here in Inverclyde, thought that this was a responsible policy prior to Humza Yousaf standing up and announcing it at the SNP conference. Because it was the policy of the ‘Great Leader’ they were forced into publicly backing the freeze despite knowing it would lead to cuts in services and jobs and a greater risk of industrial action by council staff seeking a higher pay rise than councils could afford.

If that is not cult like behaviour, I don’t know what is.

I am grateful however that Tom has now admitted to readers that he is a member of the SNP and that his letter and those of others on council tax was an orchestrated campaign by the local SNP to attack the Labour administration and justify the unjustifiable policy of the former First Minister. Another example of cult like behaviour.

Tom asks where the Scottish Labour Party’s policy is on local tax reform. That’s rich coming from a member of a party that has been in government for 17 years. For that entire period, they have promised to abolish the unfair council tax and have singularly failed to do so. Maybe it is the SNP who should be saying sorry, not me?

I note that in producing his calculation on the percentage that the council tax rise would have been of his pension increase Tom conveniently appears to omit the increase he received in his occupational pension. Even then I am not convinced his calculation is accurate. If he emails me his council tax band, I will check it for him.

Finally, Tom refers to the unanimous decision of the council not to increase council tax in April 2017 weeks before the May 2017 election, implying that this decision was made because of the election.

He conveniently forgets to mention that the Scottish Government had already implemented increases in council tax for bands E to H of between 7.5 per cent and 22.5 per cent that year and that the council did not want to apply an additional increase on top of those increases.

The SNP government was proposing to apply the exact same increases as they did in 2017 in 2024, prior to Humza Yousaf making his announcement of a freeze at the October 2023 SNP Conference.

The local SNP group supported those increases of 7.5 per cent to 22.5 per cent for properties in band E to H in a response to the Scottish Government’s consultation.

The only thing that stopped Tom and others in households in bands E to H facing these increases from 1 April 2024 was the SNP’s stunning by-election defeat in Rutherglen and Hamilton West where these proposed increases featured heavily.

Overnight the SNP went from saying that the middle-class households like Tom’s could afford to pay a bit more to support council services to saying they needed to have their council tax frozen because of the cost-of-living crisis.

Tom knows the council tax freeze was the wrong policy priority, he just can’t bring himself to admit it as loyalty to the party and the cause always comes first.

Councillor Stephen McCabe

Leader of the Council

Elected Member Inverclyde East (Ward 1)