I am one of these odd people who keeps an eye on council by-elections as a useful guide to the political weather. In periods between elections, I find that they tend to be more reliable than opinion polls.

This is for the simple reason that they involve real people who take the trouble to cast real votes. All the usual caveats apply – relatively low turn-outs and local factors among them. But still, the trends are sometimes revealing.

Take the case of Kirkintilloch East and Twechar last week. Like many recent by-elections, it arose from the previous councillor having become an MP. In this case it was Susan Murray, now Liberal Democrat MP for Mid Dunbartonshire.

Ms Murray was elected as a councillor in 2022 through proportional representation. At that time, in terms of first preference votes, the SNP took 34 per cent, Labour 19 per cent and the LibDems 16 per cent.

Read more by Brian Wilson

If the opinion polls were to be believed, the by-election should have been a shoo-in for the Nationalists. Instead, their vote share fell by 11 per cent, the LibDems did rather well and the Labour candidate gained the seat with over 30 per cent of first preferences.

That was only one of the interesting outcomes. Further down the pecking order, the Tory vote which was 13 per cent in 2022 collapsed to under five while the Reform candidate, out of nowhere, polled more than treble that share.

Taken in isolation, the result may not mean much. It would be optimistic to assume that where Kirkintilloch and........

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