THE SNP beat Labour as the biggest party in Glasgow by just one seat in a nail biting race to the finish.
And the Greens saw a huge boost to their vote share and number of councillors, while the Conservatives saw a complete bottom out to their vote. The party had seven councillors in 2017, but only returned two.
But the big story of the count was the neck and neck race to the top spot between the SNP and Labour.
By 4.45pm, only one ward was left to call - Maryhill. Both the Labour and the SNP were sitting at 35 councillors each, and there were three spots up for grabs.
But it was an SNP win - with a jubilant Franny Scally and Abdul Bastani, a former asylum seeker, dancing their way out of the announcement room to a group of cheering supporters. They took the SNP council group to 37, with Labour on 35. With neither in a position to form a majority the Greens, who won ten seats, are set to be the kingmakers.
And despite how close it was, the First Minister said she takes it as a win.
Speaking to The National, she said: “In Glasgow, if you told me when I was a much younger woman in politics being beaten by Labour in Glasgow at election after election that we would be in the position of being the largest party in Glasgow and then reelected as the largest party in Glasgow I would have struggled to believe it.
“The extent of the SNP’s success in this city is quite something. Labour chucked the kitchen sink at Glasgow and they obviously benefitted enormously from the collapse in the Tory vote here and yet they still haven’t managed to beat us either in number of seats or in share of the vote.”
SNP council leader Susan Aitken, who was beaten in first preference votes by Green Holly Bruce, said she was pleased with the result and that the SNP held out despite a concerted assault from Labour and the amount of money the unionist party threw at the campaign.
She said: “They had much more resources in this campaign and all of it ultimately, we remain the biggest party, we won the election in Glasgow despite everything that was thrown at us.
“I’m really disappointed I’ve lost three brilliant colleagues and those are the vagaries of electoral politics. I'll miss them enormously and I’m upset on their behalf that they weren’t elected.
“We are only two seats down compared to where we were in 2017, with all of that it’s a pretty great result I’m pleased.”
One of the big upsets in Glasgow was Mhairi Hunter losing her seat in Southside Central, David Turner lost out to Labour in Shettleston.
Asked if the SNP will be entering into discussions with the Greens about powersharing, Aitken said: “I know the Greens have their internal processes to go through but they also have a principled position that they will allow the largest party to have the first shot at forming an adminstration and the SNP is the largest party so I’ll maybe hold them to that principled position.”
The SNP group leader added that she didn’t want to “pre-empt the outcome” of any discussions and noted it could take a while as both parties will be drilling into complex policy talks.
She added: “We do have a good mature constructive working relationship, a great deal that we share in common, obviously differences as well but I think it’s been demonstrated at national level with the cooperation agreement as well as here in Glasgow that we have been able to find our way round our differences and accommodate them by treating each other with respect.”
Elsewhere, Labour were jubilant despite not getting the most seats, having gained five councillors from 2017. One supporter was overheard by the National saying it was the “best day they had in Glasgow since 2015”.
The National spoke to Labour leader Anas Sarwar at the count just before Maryhill was called.
He said: “I think if you look at the situation in Glasgow the SNP vote share has gone down, the Labour vote share has gone up, we have gained seats from the Tories, we’ve gained seats from the SNP.
“I think that demonstrates that over the last five years this SNP administration in Glasgow has neglected the city of Glasgow, they haven’t moved Glasgow forward, instead they’ve taken Glasgow backwards and that’s an issue we’re going to continue to build upon.”
But the Greens were also jubilant, and somewhat taken aback by their gains, with many supporters visibly in tears when the first few results were called.
Green group leader Jon Molyneaux, who also came out on top of first preference votes in Pollokshields, told The National: “I’m absolutely chuffed, it’s a lot of work from my campaign team and over the past five years winning people’s trust and working hard for the community. I’m delighted that people have put their faith in me to doing that.
“It’s an incredible day, it’s our biggest and most active campaign ever, we’ve had so many volunteers putting in a huge effort, but still the results today are beyond what we would have hoped for.”
