A FORMER council leader has quit the SNP saying his old colleagues “are making an awful lot of mistakes” after he was suspended for rebelling against a crucial vote.
Alex Nicoll, who used to be the co-leader of the Aberdeen City Council, said he has “lost confidence” in the man who replaced him over the controversial decision to make bus gates permanent in the city’s centre.
He was suspended by the local SNP group hours after he rebelled and refused to vote to make the Aberdeen city centre bus gates, which limit traffic on certain roads to buses and other authorised vehicles, permanent last month.
The former police officer led the Aberdeen local authority for a year following a successful election in 2022 and said his decision to leave the party was more than just about the bus gates.
Speaking to the Press and Journal he said: “We are making an awful lot of mistakes.”
When asked by the newspaper to detail the mistakes the party’s local group are making, he reportedly scoffed and said: “Where to start?”
Reportedly the councillors suspension came during a “stormy meeting”, which lasted “into the evening” when it should have been a brief call.
He claimed he was told to attend a usual post-vote Teams conference call with other SNP group members but was given only three minutes’ notice.
Nicoll claimed he had been voting remotely from the car on his way to a family event and “didn’t get the chance to be present” at the council summit.
He said around the same time of the meeting he received a letter telling him he was suspended.
“It is difficult to see how that can be in any way remotely fair,” he said.
He added: “I will raise it with the party, but I can’t have confidence in Christian Allard’s leadership anymore.”
Speaking to The National Nicoll said he resigned from the whip, and it is his understanding that thereby leaving the local group he automatically resigned from the party as well.
“I will be an independent. It doesn’t put me up or down,” he told the P&J.
He also said the reason why he did not accept the whip “is partly because of the bus gates decision, but another thing is how it was handled by Christian Allard (bellow).
“I had made it clear to the group that I saw this as a vote of confidence.
“I am comfortable with my decision, sleep easily at night and will now exercise my common sense in taking decisions since I am no longer whipped.
“There are a number of things we have got wrong, obviously one of those being the decision around the bus gates.”
The city centre bus gates wasn’t the only reason why Nicoll quit the local group as he said the handling of the hundreds of people being forced from their homes due to the ongoing Raac crisis by the local authority has been “hugely disappointing”.
He said: “The situation is unacceptable.
“I am also hugely disappointed we have not got any solution for Raac despite the issue being in the public domain for months.
“What are we doing for the poor homeowners to provide any answers to them on what’s happening with their homes?”
