A FEW years ago I had a meeting in the Yorkshire Terrier pub in Stonegate. As we settled into the upstairs room, all the leading players on the council walked in. It was interesting to see who sat next to whom, and to see who sat alone in the busy crowd, talking to no one.

There was, it has to be said, a certain self-important buzz about this group of councillors on that night. In those days the Lib-Dems were in charge. Other than imparting that information, it seems unnecessary now to mention names.

With this scenario called to mind, I began to speculate about who James Alexander might sit next to on a similar outing. And this set me wondering more generally about this Labour administration at a time when one of its own councillors has jumped ships to the Tories in the city. Councillor Helen Douglas, it is safe to suppose, wouldn't be invited along for such a social visit to the pub.

James Alexander has had a rough reception from some in York. I do not wish here to defend or decry the council leader, merely to offer some observations from a step or two back.

It is sometimes suggested that Mr Alexander acts in a dictatorial way or that he plays free with democracy. This seems a little unfair. Labour won under the rules as arranged. To point out sagely, as a regular correspondent did in a letter published at the weekend, that "more people voted for other parties than voted Labour at the last council elections" is only to highlight the way democracy sometimes works.

Mr Alexander as leader won the necessary number of votes and so was given the council to lead. And lead it he has. Whether or not you like the direction he has taken is a matter of taste.

I have a theory about this. And here, with a dusty flourish, is my hypothesis. In winning the election, fairly and squarely, James Alexander made a miscalculation. Instead of remembering that many people in the city didn't vote for him, he took his majority as if it were a love letter to him from the whole of York. This put stars in his eyes and those stars distracted him. Well, it's only a theory but I like it.

Voters will have their say again next May, unless the council implodes before then. As for Cllr Douglas, well I know little about her. Some will see her defection as a principled act; others, perhaps, will question how you can support one party one day, and another the next. Such grand inconsistency seems a little odd to me, but then I have never belonged to any political party.

As I mentioned a few paragraphs back, the Lib-Dems were in power when they trooped into that pub. Some time later they weren't, as is the capricious way with democracy. As I recall it, the Lib Dems weren't at all popular by the time they stopped running the council.

So perhaps some of the antipathy aimed at James Alexander goes with the territory; and some of it comes down to that unbending sense of certainty.

Not all of the certainty has been bad. This columnist is among few residents in York to believe that the closure of Lendal Bridge was a brave experiment – a worthwhile trial, and needed in our car-clogged age, but one so badly botched that the ill effects will be felt for years.

THIS is a big day for politics, as by tomorrow we shall know whether or not the attic has been annexed. Well, that's one way of looking at Scotland, and no disrespect intended.

So many words have been expended on the independence vote that it seems almost futile to add more to the vertiginous pile. For what it's worth, I hope matters stay arranged as they are. But as a non-Scot, I don't have a say.

In Sunday's Observer, Alistair Darling, champion of the No vote, said: "We will win" right across the top of the paper. That seems an unwarranted degree of certitude for something too close to call.

Some debate has addressed what, if the Yes contingent won, the UK should then be called. An anagram might suffice: the Untied Kingdom.