{"id":793897,"date":"2026-02-28T03:18:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T03:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/793897\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T03:18:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T03:18:11","slug":"glasgow-your-party-alternative-budget-shows-different-kind-of-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/793897\/","title":{"rendered":"Glasgow Your Party alternative budget shows \u2018different kind of politics\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tScotland<\/a><\/p>\n

Le\u00f2dhas Massie, a Your Party councillor in Glasgow, and Niall Christie, the recently elected central executive committee (CEC) representative for Scotland, spoke to Socialist Worker about what was proposed<\/p>\n

By Jude Mckechnie<\/b><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDownloading PDF. Please wait…<\/p>\n

Friday 27 February 2026<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tIssue <\/a>
\n\t\t\t\t\"Dan<\/p>\n

Councillor Dan Hutchison was one of those pushing for an alternative budget (Pic: @thisisyourparty on X)<\/p>\n

The Scottish Greens and the SNP teamed up to pass a budget on Glasgow City Council this week that offers nothing but more austerity. It is full of short-term fixes that won\u2019t address the systemic issues blighting the city.<\/p>\n

But there was an alternative. Your Party councillors had proposed a budget without cuts to public services, but the other parties refused to back it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Your Party councillors\u2019 proposal would have included steps towards ending homelessness in the city and moving council workers to a four day working week with no loss of pay.<\/p>\n

It argued that council services should be brought back in house\u2014out of the hands of private contractors.<\/p>\n

It proposed a strategy to reintroduce council housing directly managed by Glasgow city council. This would help to alleviate the worsening housing and homelessness crises engulfing the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Le\u00f2dhas Massie, who defected from the Scottish Greens to join Your Party in Glasgow, spoke to Socialist Worker about the \u201cPeople\u2019s Budget\u201d. He explained how Your Party represents a different kind of politics in Scotland.<\/a><\/p>\n

Le\u00f2dhas said that the budget proposed this week was about \u201cfuture-proofing\u201d and not doing further harm to public services.<\/p>\n

He explained the pressures on councillors to prevent them from offering more radical, anti-austerity budgets. \u201cCouncillors have to propose a balanced budget, it\u2019s a legal requirement. What that usually means is that there are two options\u2014council tax rises and cuts.<\/p>\n

\u201cCouncillors are left operating within those confines. But, we managed to put together a proposal that the council\u2019s legal team confirmed was competent. One that offered a route map to a 4-day working week for council workers and a route map to social housing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really disappointing that none of the other parties backed it,\u201d said Le\u00f2dhas.<\/p>\n

At the Your Party Scotland founding conference in February<\/a>, members voted that Your Party Scotland\u2019s elected representatives should \u201cnever vote for cuts\u201d and \u201cwill support the moving of legal no cuts budgets in council chambers and in Holyrood.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are rules to this party that were voted on by the membership that govern what we do. No Your Party councillor politically should sign up to austerity,\u201d argued Le\u00f2dhas.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll three councillors joined this new party because we wanted to fundamentally transform the system we live in. That\u2019s why we\u2019re not in the Greens anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Greens position themselves as a political force that is \u2018socialist\u2019 and \u2018anti-capitalist\u2019 but then they sign up to budgets that are an acceptance of the status quo and the system.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re now in the financial situation that we\u2019re in now because of the budget cuts they\u2019ve voted for.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the Scottish parliamentary elections in May, and the Scottish local elections in 2027, Le\u00f2dhas said, \u201cWhat we\u2019ve done here, hopefully, gives those who are thinking about standing as candidates in elections an example of what can be achieved.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat they can take a stand against what permeates through all the other parties. They can take a stand against cuts.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was echoed by Niall Christie, the recently elected<\/a> central executive committee (CEC) representative for Scotland.<\/p>\n

He explained to Socialist Worker that, \u201cthere was a willingness from trade unions, particularly from Unison, to help draft this budget\u201d. That is because people are \u201cabsolutely despondent\u201d about the current situation in Glasgow.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, this budget was the starting gun towards the 2027 local elections.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe issues that councillors were building a framework to address in Glasgow\u201d are \u201cthe same issues you\u2019ll find across the other 32 councils in Scotland,\u201d he argued.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour Party is offering a total step change,\u201d said Niall. \u201cThere\u2019s a need for a different kind of politics. There\u2019s a need for a political alternative that doesn\u2019t just rule in their own interest, but in the interests of the people of Scotland.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scotland Le\u00f2dhas Massie, a Your Party councillor in Glasgow, and Niall Christie, the recently elected central executive committee…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":793898,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7826],"tags":[748,918,4884,712,16,15,152347],"class_list":{"0":"post-793897","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-glasgow","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-glasgow","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-scotland","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-your-party"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/793898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}