On to the next battle: council elections 2012

The self-inflicted damage SLAB did to themselves by allowing their Lib Dem lapdogs to push through STV voting for local government elections seriously weakened their party in 2007. Can we drive the stake further into the vampire chest in 2012? Probably:

'All hands are needed on deck or else Scottish Labour could sink without a trace'

... They got only 15 of 73 first-past-the-post seats, less than half their previous total, and, as someone keeps reminding me, Dumbarton is now Labour’s most northerly constituency. Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, Fife, Lanarkshire, the Lothians, the Highlands — the list is endless — are now all SNP strongholds.

But worse is bound to come. Next year sees the elections for Scotland’s 32 local councils and here again we can expect significant SNP gains.

Labour’s stranglehold on this area of government was shattered four years ago, thanks to the introduction of the STV version of proportional representation, to the extent that only Glasgow and North Lanarkshire councils are now wholly Labour-run.

The diminution of this grassroots base was certainly one of the reasons – albeit a minor one – for Labour’s heavy defeat two weeks ago, but this serious lack of support at council level will also make it harder for the party to stage an effective fightback during the next five years that Alex Salmond reigns supreme.

Speaking of local government, there is an important by-election in Aberdeen on Thursday (Dyce / Buckstone / Danestone). If the SNP can gain the seat from the defending Lib Dems, we become the largest party in the current LibDem/SNP coalition running the city. Do we then get to provide the council leader and the Lord Provost?

First preferences in 2007 were [* denotes the 4 elected councillors]:

*Mark McDonald (SNP) 2,620
*Barney Crockett (Lab) 1,801
*Ron Clark (LD) 1534
Avril MacKenzie (Con) 603
*George Penny (LD) 360
Rhonda Reekie (Grn) 147
Angela Dunn (Ind) 116
Dennis Grattan (Ind) 57

... The SNP would probably have won two seats here in 2007 if they had stood two candidates.

http://www.vote-2007.co.uk/index.php?topic=5830.0

Note: Mark McDonald has just been elected as a list MSP for the North East (an astounding feat, when you realise that the SNP won 100% of the FPTP seats in the region). This means that this ward will have yet another by-election soon.