It was a bad day for Conservative election hopefuls across the UK on Friday, after the party slumped to a painful defeat in local council counts.
And while the woes of the national party and the ongoing saga around Boris Johnson and 'Partygate' were seen as the cause for their poor showing, in West Lothian candidates found that in many cases they lost not because of a lack of first choice votes, but because of a squeeze by other parties under Scotland's Single Transferable Vote (STV) system.
There were some nail biting scenes among candidates around the count as Friday morning stretched into the afternoon. And where there were votes to be picked up it was the SNP which picked them up.
