Neil Gray has welcomed the installation of an SNP administration at North Lanarkshire Council for the first time in the council’s history and says that the “electorate’s views [have been] realised” as the largest party takes control at the Civic Centre.
The Airdrie & Shotts MSP says he is “absolutely delighted” that the party’s 36 councillors will form a minority administration, after they finished four seats ahead of a Labour group who are now in opposition for the first time.
Jordan Linden was confirmed as the new leader of Scotland’s fourth-largest council at its opening post-election meeting on Thursday afternoon, with Tracy Carragher as his deputy, and Agnes Magowan and Anne Thomas becoming provost and depute.
Scottish Government minister Mr Gray said: “All the hard work before, during and after the election has paid off – North Lanarkshire voted for change and this new administration will bring just that.
“There will undoubtedly be challenges ahead but the SNP, with the backing of the Green councillor and one independent, will work hard to deliver on our ambitious policy and won’t shirk away from the challenges that the cost-of-living crisis and Covid rebuilding will bring.
“I wish SNP leader Councillor Linden and his team the very best and I look forward to seeing what happens over the next five years and beyond.”
Mr Gray noted that the outcome followed “a tense couple of weeks since the local election” in which both main parties set out intentions to form minority administrations – until Labour abandoned those plans following a group vote on Tuesday evening after conceding to the chamber’s arithmetic and with the looming prospect of cutting a deck of cards to decide on office bearers.
The culture minister noted that the SNP taking control of the council “was never a done deal until the meeting”; and added of the SNP councillors in the four wards forming his constituency: “Airdrie & Shotts has a group of seven extremely experienced and dedicated political faces to represent it, and I know from working with them all that they will be fighting for their areas.”
North Lanarkshire Council was officially established in 1996 with its first elections having taken place in a “shadow year” 12 months earlier – and has been run by a Labour administration for its entire history.
This week’s historic switch means that the SNP now hold all of the major political positions in the authority area, with all five of its MSPs and the area’s four MPs also coming from the party.
It rounds off the complete political shift in the former Labour heartland which began in 2011 when Alex Neil and Jamie Hepburn became the SNP’s first constituency parliamentarians, respectively winning the Airdrie & Shotts and Cumbernauld & Kilsyth seats in that year’s Holyrood election.
All four of North Lanarkshire’s long-standing Labour seats at Westminster went to the SNP at the 2015 general election and the party made the three remaining Holyrood gains a year later.
Labour regained Coatbridge, Chryston & Bellshill in the House of Commons between 2017 and 2019 but now have no parliamentarians in North Lanarkshire constituencies and have been the second-placed party at each of the past two council elections.
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