Michael Kelly: City's new leader knows what his priorities are

Brought low by the sensational reverberations of the Purcell affair, the running of the council was, we were told by the doom-mongers, about to grind to a halt in a welter of recriminations and backstabbing.

Well, since that fateful day at the end of February when the meteoric rise of the former leader burned out in the drug-fuelled atmosphere of personal scandal, the schools have stayed open, the bins have been emptied and Glasgow has won an international marketing award.

There was no chaos, no breakdown of administration, no new sensations emerging from the council to give opposition parties so much as a sniff during the General Election. Despite the intense efforts of the SNP to whip up a backlash to the Purcell affair Labour won every seat looking back.

Yesterday the Labour administration sought to consolidate this period of strong and stable government by electing a new leader of the Labour Group and of the City Council.

However benignly one looks upon the council it cannot be disguised that this leadership election was one of the most aggressively contested for years. Threats of de-selection were made to councillors in an effort to secure their votes. Others were pressurised to vote for constituency colleagues irrespective of merit. So concerned were Labour Party officials that the electronic voting system might not guarantee a secret ballot that it was abandoned and old-fashioned ballot papers were used instead.

The result was a properly conducted election which resulted in a victory for Gordon Matheson. In Matheson the Group have chosen a pragmatic moderniser who will continue the work of bringing together the various stakeholders in the city – business, the voluntary sector, for example. A middle-aged man in a civil partnership, he is a regular attendee at Mass. He is experienced and a good communicator.

His experience of running the huge Education Department and most recently as Treasurer means he understands both how easy money is to spend and how difficult to raise. This knowledge is vital because clearly the most important challenge that Glasgow faces is in dealing with the severe budgetary cuts that will be imposed on it and all councils by the new Westminster government filtering the medicine through Holyrood.

If, as may still possibly be the case, it is a Tory government that is at the root of these cuts then they will be portrayed here, irrespective of the reality, as more severe and more punitive to Scotland than they otherwise would have been.

In years past, Labour in Glasgow would have relished a fight with the Tories and would have been confident of scoring some political victories. In the present circumstances it is not a battle they have the stomach for because, being realists, they know they cannot win.

Back in the days when Margaret Thatcher was imposing her cuts, councils in Scotland were raising 50 per cent of their income through rates. Now they can generate only 15 per cent – and they have had a council tax freeze imposed upon them.

So Glasgow is not going to turn into a maverick council along the lines of Liverpool under Derek Hatton. First, it doesn't have the power. Secondly, a glance through the list of unsuccessful contenders in the leadership election shows that there is no Old Labour caucus threatening revolution.

Matheson himself recognises that cuts are inevitable and has a clear idea of his priorities – education, skills and training and targeted support of the vulnerable. He has already proved his commitment to the reform of council services and will be looking to release funds by further savings to protect his red line areas.

Not that the group will allow his administration passively to accept all the economic dirt that the Scottish Government chooses to throw at it. He has already started discussions with what he calls "Glasgow's sister cities" – by which he means the other three big Scottish cities.

He views cities as engines of recovery and growth, and wants to unite Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee in taking the fight back to Holyrood. It's a bold idea requiring cross-party as well as geographic agreement, and indicates how daring and innovative he wants to be.

His administration will be much less centralist and yesterday he committed himself to reform the council's committee structure to allow decision making to be much more inclusive of the views of rank and file councillors.

He is also politically astute enough to realise that in an election he won clearly but by a fairly narrow margin of 25 to 19 he has to accommodate the losers and their supporters in his administration. How well he can heal the wounds that any election inevitably opens will largely determine how far he can push his radical agenda.

He must treat this as a priority. Labour Group elections are annual affairs. The last thing Glasgow needs is to refit the revolving door to the leader's office that was has been in storage since the Lally/Mcfadden era.

But Matheson's programme is to extend inclusiveness well beyond George Square. It is his intention to conduct a system of structured and open consultation with groups and communities across the city to allow "ordinary" citizens opportunities to formulate and feedback on policy. He intends to be out and about with voters not huddled in committee rooms with cronies.

He talks as a person who has thought through how Glasgow can be protected in the coming age of austerity. In fact, much of what he says is inspirational – not in the glitzy, showbiz personality sense so loved of the media and the public. But in the more fundamental sense of bringing the drive for improvement and advance back on to the local political agenda.

No local politician will be able to resist the punishment that will be inflicted as the UK struggles back to economic health. Under Matheson Glasgow has half a chance of surviving with its soul intact.

• Michael Kelly is a former Labour lord provost of Glasgow