Deputy provost quits Labour for SNP

Labour will today lose its overall majority on the City of Edinburgh Council as the deputy Lord Provost dramatically defects to the Scottish National Party.

Steve Cardownie, a councillor in Edinburgh since 1988 and party member since 1983, will be unveiled formally as the SNP's latest political convert, leaving his former Labour colleagues dependent on the casting vote of the Lord Provost to hold on to control of the capital.

Mr Cardownie, who will become the only SNP councillor in the city, blamed "the right-wing lurch" of Labour under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown for his decision, and claimed that Scotland would be better served by independence.

Mr Cardownie, 52, said:

"I do not feel in my heart of hearts that I can any longer support the Labour administration on the council with Labour's lurch to the right of British politics. The SNP is the only left-of-centre political party remaining in Scotland. This is not some sudden conversion with a single root cause, but a move I have been considering for some time.

"The performance of Labour at Holyrood has been high-handed and arrogant, and they have not covered themselves in glory."

A leading Labour councillor who was Edinburgh's "festivals tsar" and deputy Lord Provost, Mr Cardownie said he had been impressed by a visit he made to Lithuania before the Baltic state joined the European Union. He said he had seen the "enthusiasm of a country of four-and-a-half million people playing their full part in the EU as an independent country".

Mr Cardownie's defection leaves Edinburgh city council "hung", with 29 Labour councillors and 29 now in opposition. Labour will have to depend on the casting vote of the Lord Provost, who chairs meetings of the full council.

SNP leader Alex Salmond said:

"The SNP is now the only true social-democratic party in Scotland. We welcome councillor Cardownie with open arms."