Jenny Dawe: If you want proof that coalitions can work, just look at Edinburgh

Is it that they are so out of touch with the realities of the modern coalition politics of Scottish local government that they genuinely believe that concentrating power in one person is the right way forward?

In this newspaper on Monday, Keith Geddes suggested that coalitions in local councils are inherently unworkable, cannot provide leadership, and that, in consequence, the answer lies in elected mayors/provosts. He claimed that coalitions had inevitably led to weak and indecisive governance. This is certainly not true for Edinburgh.

Coalitions are not inherently unstable. For eight years the Liberal Democrats and Labour worked quite successfully together to run Scotland's government.

The LibDem/SNP coalition in Edinburgh works well. It was formed after much discussion within and between parties and has been built on an agreed set of principles and procedures. We have a shared strategic vision for Edinburgh, a clear sense of direction and have had to take extremely tough decisions to deal with the unhelpful budgetary situation we inherited and the dire realities of economic recession.

Keith Geddes wrongly claimed that trams and school closures are issues handled badly in Edinburgh. Despite our different views on trams, the coalition has had no serious disagreements on how we should proceed. Most of the negativity has come from the outside, from some parliamentarians, including one Labour MP.

As for school closures, this is an issue which can never be dealt with painlessly by any administration, as the previous single party administration knows only too well when it suffered defeat.

Of course there were tensions for all coalition councillors in wards where schools had to close for good educational and budgetary reasons, but we held together none the less and delivered the right decision.

A directly elected leader, unless they had totally undemocratic dictatorial powers, would not have made either of these issues any easier to handle.

In supporting the concept of elected mayors, most proponents focus almost exclusively on London as a successful mayoralty. After Margaret Thatcher abolished the Greater London Council, the need for a strategic authority for the whole of the London area remained.

However, the new system of governance for London is not entirely rosy. Mayor Boris Johnson still lacks the tax-raising powers which powerful American mayors, for instance, possess. And London remains a two-tier city with the boroughs retaining important powers in areas such as housing and social work.

By contrast, Edinburgh, except when we had districts and regions, has for centuries been governed by a single city authority. There is no need for the centralised personality politics of a directly elected leader when we have a democratic decision-making structure of meetings that involve councillors representing all parts of the city and five political parties.

Although England has had referendum legislation since 2000 for local authorities to establish an elected mayor, there have been only 12 votes in favour, none in larger cities, with one council later abolishing the post.

Turn-out for direct mayoral elections has shown poor public interest in many places. There is no evidence that councils with directly elected mayors perform any better than those without.

Jenny Dawe is Liberal Democrat Leader of City of Edinburgh Council.