In principle, the 1973 Act’s Tayside Region was perfectly sound, so the basic outline was transposed intact both here and in the previous version of this project. As you’d expect though, where it differs is in having a wider range of underlying municipalities. This Region includes the current Angus, Dundee and Perth & Kinross Councils, which were the Districts in the previous setup. That means in historic terms it takes in Angus, Kinross-shire and most of Perthshire, sans a large chunk that was given over to Stirling and a much smaller one to Clackmannanshire under that Act. This would be the only region in the country to contain two cities, pairing Dundee (one of our big four) with Perth (one of our little four).

Unlike Scotland’s two largest cities I haven’t given Dundee, the fourth largest, a unitary authority. The fear with the big two was that they’d overpower the surrounding areas or go too far in terms of dismantling historic neighbouring counties. Neither of those issues apply to Dundee. In population terms it’s about 37% of Tayside, and as Regional Councils weight against larger municipalities, only 28% of the seats.

In political terms, all of these areas are historic SNP heartlands and so they end up with a comfortable lead at both levels. However, the Conservatives remain a solid force in the region outside of Dundee, so easily place second. Labour are weak outside of Dundee, with this region containing some rare fifth places for the party, and the Lib Dems have some strange local support across parts of the region that doesn’t exist at parliamentary level, meaning both parties are nearly tied. All of the non-city councils have at least some Independents, and the Greens also have a fair degree of representation albeit mostly on the Perthshire end and Dundee. Despite Dundee being the only place they ran a full slate of candidates in 2022, Alba fail to cross the 3% threshold in any municipality.