A PROSPECTIVE general election candidate has called on a rival to ‘come clean’ about whether he supports a council tax freeze for locals.

A war of words has broken out between Alba Party general secretary Chris McEleny and Labour election hopeful Martin McCluskey after the former challenged his opponent to outline his position on keeping local council tax at the same level in the local authority's upcoming budget.

Mr McEleny has claimed the Gourock councillor, along with his local Labour party colleagues, wants to raise council tax in Inverclyde despite campaigning against proposals to raise it during the high-profile Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election last year.

However, Councillor McCluskey has today branded Mr McEleny’s intervention as ‘disingenuous rubbish’.

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Mr McEleny said: “You could be forgiven for concluding that the Labour Party must think people in Inverclyde button up the back.

“Last year, Sir Keir Starmer was promising an English-only council tax freeze and it was to be paid for by a windfall tax on Scotland’s North Sea oil and gas.

“Meanwhile, in Inverclyde, Labour councillors are saying that our council tax must go up, but they spent the end of last summer in Rutherglen telling people that a vote for Labour would be a vote against making people pay more of it - there’s even a picture of them doing it.

“In the upcoming budget there is an opportunity to give a break to people who are really struggling at the moment with the cost-of-living crisis, through freezing their council tax for the year ahead.

“LMartin McCluskey was happy to campaign against increases to council tax in South Lanarkshire, so why should it have to increase for hard-working people in Inverclyde?"

An image forwarded to the Telegraph shows Councillor McCluskey and Inverclyde Council leader Stephen McCabe campaigning in Rutherglen, with the latter holding a leaflet which suggests that the SNP would make constituents pay more council tax.

Greenock Telegraph:

However in a letter the Telegraph published last week, the local authority leader said Mr McEleny’s claim that he was planning to support a rise in council tax locally after campaigning against hikes elsewhere was ‘entirely false’.

Councillor McCluskey said: “When Chris McEleny was an Inverclyde councillor and leader of the SNP group he signed up to Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon’s plans to gut the local government services that working people rely on.

“Labour will be taking no lessons from him.

“As he well knows, the Labour Party campaign in Rutherglen opposed the SNP’s proposals for an increase of over 20 per cent in council tax for many people.

“This was a campaign that we won, and the SNP scrapped their plans, potentially saving people in Inverclyde hundreds of pounds.

“The SNP’s announcement of a council tax freeze – without any idea of how they would pay for it – has led us to where we are now, with councils facing massive cuts and the SNP government trying to tie the hands of councils with financial penalties and ringfencing, meaning that cuts continue to land on services that have been hit year after year.

“Inverclyde Council is currently consulting with the public on the budget for next year. I’d encourage everyone who cares about the future of their services to respond to that consultation, and the more detailed consultation that will come in a matter of weeks.

“I will be listening to the responses from the people of Inverclyde – not from Chris McEleny and the ALBA party.

“I’d also encourage everyone who cares about this to contact our SNP representatives – Stuart McMillan and Ronnie Cowan – and ask them not to support a budget that gives Inverclyde one of the worst funding settlements we have had in years.

“This latest intervention from Chris McEleny is the kind of disingenuous rubbish that puts people off politics.”