Britons head to polls in 2017 local elections

“More seats, more votes, more councils won, bringing almost 40 years of Labour administration to an end and becoming the largest party in all of our major cities”.

The party is down 80 seats now with a total of 396, losing control of three councils, Glasgow City, Blaenau Gwent and Bridgend. It would be nice to believe that Thursday’s election was a series of local referendums on local services rendered (or not), but it would be a fantasy: this was a national election fought on national issues, and those issues revolved around the prospect of another independence referendum.

Sturgeon has argued that her mandate for a second referendum derives from the Holyrood vote in favour of one and pointed out that her party had won the local election.

And if the party managed to confound the pollsters and win a much higher share of the vote than current polling suggests, they have historically found it hard to translate that support into Westminster seats.

Labour is expected to score major victories in the mayoral elections, however, as they are taking place in the party’s heartlands.

Ruth Davidson said the results proved that her party was the only one which could challenge the Nationalists in the upcoming general election. “It’s not the SNP losing ground to the Tories”, she said in a BBC interview.

The SNP remains the largest party in local government with 431 councillors voted in.

After further declarations, the SNP needs to win 19 of the 30 seats left to be able to take overall control of the council.

Sturgeon said: “We take nothing for granted but I’m confident that the strength of these local candidates will win through”, she said.

“It was the only thing they spoke about”, she said.

Psephologists tend to warn against using local election results to predict what will happen in national polls. And even then the bald figures will disguise the fact that there’s a lot of independents get elected that are Tory in all but the colour of their rosette.

The Tories, until recently marginalised in Scottish politics, clocked up surprising wins in some of Scotland’s poorest urban neighbourhoods.

The SNP won most seats in the local elections but the Scottish Conservatives made significant gains.

The party needed to get all its candidates elected to retain its majority at the city chambers, which has been a Labour stronghold for nearly 40 years.

Whenever the (previously Toxic) Tories can win a seat in Shettleston and in some of the most deprived places in the country its clear that people are not voting according to the Conservative party position on the redistribution of wealth.

A recent poll identified Mr Robertson as a potential casualty of the general election, as the Conservatives target traditional Labour heartlands throughout the United Kingdom and SNP strongholds north of the border.

The electorate does not appear to be moving back to Labour, but instead is shifting towards the Tories. “A vote for any other party simply risks letting the SNP back in, and increases the risk of another unwanted referendum”.