End the tribalism and work together for the good of us all

True, the very thought of a coalition will have some old-time councillors birling in their graves, but the world has changed ... and the electorate has also been transformed. The old party lines have been shredded to ribbons.

It didn’t hand either Labour or SNP a mandate to govern,

Instead it gave them a challenge – work together.

Bury the hatchet, kill off the enmity, scrap the tiresome tribalism, halt the pointless points scoring and create a new era of consensus politics.

There are some whose mindsets will need to change to make this happen, so the senior party members need to lead by example, and we hope the new councillors bring a ‘community first’ approach to their debates and decisions.

It’s not a case of ‘can they do it’ but a clear desire that they do.

There will be scope to disagree but, if it is underpinned by a commitment to do what is best for Fife – not the party gurus – then it can work.

An SNP-Labour coalition ran Edinburgh for the past five years, so there is precedent, and we’re confident our councillors can do it better too.

By working together they will also freeze out the Tories who gained a host of seats largely on the back of the party’s anti-indyref2 stance than any actual love for their policies which have delivered austerity, foodbanks and benefit cuts to many local families, and that is before the Prime Minister leads the country into a potentially catastrophic hard Brexit.

But the national picture can wait until the June 8 poll.

By then we may have a historic coalition in the Kingdom.

Let those who create it make it work. For us all.