Over the course of this election campaign, there has been claim and counterclaim from the leaders of the other political parties vying for your vote.

They are, it seems, more interested in trying to divine the political calculus in the minds of Labour candidates than they are in improving the state of our city.

Susan Aitken took to the press to say that her SNP Group would be open to doing a deal with the Labour Party.

Thomas Kerr, the Conservative leader, took a similar tack. He beseeched Labour to consider a deal with the Tories, while simultaneously condemning us for propping up the SNP.

One might be tempted to term this Schrödinger’s deal.

A theoretical deal that, depending on an election outcome not yet known, simultaneously exists and does not exist.

The desperation is palpable. Susan Aitken’s SNP know that they have lost any semblance of momentum going into this election. Meanwhile, the Tory party of Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak are busy trying to distract from their impending fall into fourth place.

And all this talk of deals is preventing us from talking about the record of these parties.

Let’s take the SNP: a party that has inflicted over £300million in savings on Glasgow since it came to power at Holyrood. Their Councillors in City Chambers make great play out of their close working relationships with many Scottish Government Ministers. But just not close enough to call them out for their savage cuts to Glasgow.

A party that has spent the last two years pretending that there are no problems with their administration.

Apparently libraries weren’t closed, they just weren’t open.

Apparently the City isn’t filthy and woefully underfunded, it just needs a little bit of a spruce up.

And apparently the Trade Unionists who went out on strike, and who were threatening to go out on strike again this month, are ‘sectional interests’ intent on undermining the SNP.

The tin-ear of this administration does a disservice to this great City and its people.

Susan Aitken, in an interview for the Sunday Herald last year, essentially claimed that her administration was empowering communities. It was getting the Council ‘out of the way’, and ending the culture of paternalism.

That culture of paternalism would, we must presume, be the properly funded services that residents should expect. To this administration, community empowerment is giving people the choice of which community facilities stay closed, which potholes don’t get filled and which roads don’t get swept because there isn’t funding.

It is an attitude that one would more likely expect from a leader of the Tory Party.

Where the SNP fail to stand up for fair funding for Glasgow, the Tories fail to stand up to their government when they are hiking National Insurance or slashing Universal Credit.

While the Prime Minister and the Chancellor lie to the country about parties during lockdown, the Scottish Tories shamefully claim to be tribunes for Glasgow’s hard pressed communities.

The Glasgow Tories are more interested in talking about deals and coalitions, because it is simply easier than trying to defend their own inaction on the cost of living crisis that is hurting households here and now.

So, to put the minds of the SNP and Conservative Leaders at rest, let me be clear.

Glasgow Labour are not interested in any deals with them.

We’re only interested in one deal; a fair deal for Glasgow.