This was the election which was supposed to establish the SNP as Scotland’s new national party, replacing Labour as the default party of choice for Scottish voters. This was also the election which was expected show that last year’s extraordinary Scottish Parliament result was not a one-off and that the SNP could push on and defeat Labour in its town hall heartlands too.
But none of this has happened. Not all the results are in from Scotland’s councils yet but the overall picture is already clear. Labour has recovered from last year’s Scottish Parliament shocker and halted the SNP momentum — at least in its core key urban areas of west and central Scotland.
The SNP has not had a bad election: Alex Salmond’s party has continued to progress and picked up a couple of east coast councils — Angus and Dundee. But, crucially, it has not managed to take much ground from Labour across the western central belt, only from the Lib Dems.
Both Labour and the SNP have risen but Labour has done the better of the two — particularly given that Labour was expected to suffer at the polls this week at the hands of the SNP.
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