One small advantage Edinburgh’s Georgian City Chambers has over Victorian civic piles is the lack of fixed seats in the main auditorium. As party fortunes ebb and flow it’s easy to shift the furniture.

Well easy-ish, as they weigh a ton and must be dragged out of storage every month, and this week the facilities team had to cut the number of SNP desks by two because of the double by-election defeat the nationalists suffered earlier this month.

The fractious local SNP has kept the removal men busy over the past decade, with self-inflicted injuries only healed by the 2022 full council election. In 2017, the group returned 19 councillors but thanks largely to vicious back-stabbing, seemingly tolerated by the group leader Adam Nols-McVey, they were down to 15 by election day.

Economy convener Gavin Barrie, education vice convener Alison Dickie, plus councillors Derek Howie and Claire Bridgman all found themselves out of favour for one reason or another, but the electorate didn’t notice and they were back up to 19 in 2022.

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But it wasn’t enough for them to avoid being frozen out of power themselves and the unhappiness continued with disillusioned ex-Lord Provost Frank Ross quitting almost immediately to spark the first of five successive by-elections the SNP has lost.

Having been denied another stint as city leader, Nols-McVey stood down from his group role, and from the outside anyway, the ship has seemed........

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