Edinburgh and Glasgow Overview
Scotland’s two largest cities, our historic economic powerhouse of Glasgow and the capital at Edinburgh, are truly massive by Scottish standards. More than one in five Scots reside within the boundaries of the current city councils, and the majority of the overall population lives in the highly urbanised Central Belt surrounding and between them. In the forms proposed in this project, Glasgow has a larger population than any of the regions would, whilst Edinburgh eclipses 3 out of the 11. Given their size, rather than incorporate them into surrounding regions, my typical approach has been to retain them as Unitary Authorities, with the powers of both municipal and regional government.
Although I remain wary of the idea of simply regionalising the two big cities, as their size would make them strongly dominant within the resulting regions and/or require the creation of truly mammoth entities, I do accept there is a logic to doing so. Glasgow in particular acts as such a clear economic hub for surrounding areas that there’s a need to manage transport in particular in a joined up manner. As such, this page presents both the “core” proposal of standalone unitary authorities for Edinburgh and Glasgow, as well as two Metropolitan Region proposals that would embed them within wider regions.
Edinburgh City (Unitary)
Key Statistics
Population: 494,769
Largest Settlement: Edinburgh
Municipal Councillors: 83
Regional Commissioners: 0
Description
As the capital and second largest city, I obviously don’t need to justify Edinburgh’s continued existence as its own City Council. Where it does differ from the current city council is the loss of the western villages that were added to the city in the 1973 Act. I’m not entirely sure what the rationale was there, especially given that either way they’d have been within the wider Lothian region, but here they’ve been carved back out. That approach wasn’t taken for the southwestern spur however, as that is considered by the statistics boffins to have fully merged in with the Edinburgh settlement area.
Although Edinburgh is clearly the centre of the wider Lothian area, in population terms it’s completely dominant. It’d have 55% of the population of a Lothian Region, had I opted for one. Even if that was expanded slightly to Lothian and the Borders, it’s still 45% and thus nearly the majority of the area. Its weight on a Regional Council would be somewhat less, but it still strikes me as too big to comfortably sit within a wider Region under the general ethos of this project. As much as that then makes the organisation of the remaining Lothian area complex, I felt like leaving it as a Unitary Authority was justified, with necessary wider work done cooperatively with surrounding municipalities rather than formally via a Region. If you disagree, see the alternative proposal further down.
As with capital cities worldwide, Edinburgh is politically highly diverse. The sizeable groups of councillors it already has for all five of the major parties are further expanded here by the fact this version has an extra 20 councillors. The SNP have a lead here as they do in other cities but it’s easily their weakest one of the eight. Labour place second here in votes in a way they didn’t in the real election because the bits carved off are some of the strongest Lib Dem parts of the country, placing them third in votes. The fourth-placed Conservatives were ill-served by STV in the real world and pipped to fourth in seats by the Greens, who in this system are correctly the smallest bloc but with their strongest vote share of any city council. All of that combined makes this the only council in the project where all five major parties get double-digit vote and seat shares.
Projected Election Results (2022)
Votes
Seats
Glasgow City (Unitary)
Key Statistics
Population: 619,291
Largest Settlement: Glasgow
Municipal Councillors: 97
Regional Commissioners: 0
Description
Glasgow is Scotland’s largest city, and therefore makes for an extremely obvious municipality. Compared to the existing council, this version loses the village of Carmunnock which has been pretty inexplicably part of the city since the 1973 Act. It’s not actually even part of the Greater Glasgow Settlement the way many bordering towns in other Councils are, so it was due a chucking out.
People often call for Glasgow to annex some of it’s suburbs (funnily enough, 9 times out of 10 folk only want to absorb the posh ones, and ignore the poorer ones), despite the city’s already massive size by Scottish standards. I’m strongly resistant to any suggestion the city should be expanded, and especially so when that’s explicitly demanding the expansion of the core municipal area. Apart from the fact Scotland’s local government units are already too big, adding every area that’s statistically part of Greater Glasgow would effectively wipe Renfrewshire out of existence and consume most of the population of Dunbartonshire. These are big, historic counties, and you need to have a better reason to eviscerate them than “but Glasgow is hungry for more Council Tax”. Glaswegians salivating over the prospect of those additional revenues would also do well to remember that the homes the tax is levied on come with voting residents, many of whom lie rightwards of the core Glasgow average.
It is unarguable that Glasgow sits at the heart of the West Central Belt and has an economic impact over that whole area. Nonetheless, I don’t think that you necessarily need to have the city either annex its surrounds or become integrated into a wider Regional Council in order to adequately address those matters which do need co-operation across the conurbation. Formal joint bodies consisting of the democratically elected representatives from the councils they cover, improving on the model of SPT, could suffice. If you disagree, see the alternative proposal further down.
As Scotland’s largest and most left-leaning city, the SNP and Labour are the natural dominant forces here, with little between them in votes and only a two seat advantage for the SNP. The Greens also do very well in big cities the continent over and Glasgow is no different, with their performance not all that far behind Edinburgh. When you consider that there’s a sweet spot of combined youth and affluence that tips massively towards the Greens, and Edinburgh’s population has proportionally more of those demographics than Glasgow’s, that’s perhaps surprising. By contrast, the Conservatives and Lib Dems both do worse here than in any other city, and in fact for the Lib Dems their support is so low here that they don’t even cross the threshold for seats. STV really, really doesn’t favour the Conservatives in Glasgow though, so this system gives them a much more generous share of seats than they actually got in the real world.
Projected Election Results (2022)
Votes
Seats
Metropolitan Regions Overview
We also all know there’s at least one person whose life ambition is to lead such a council (though their regular CV-pushing is specifically for a directly elected mayor), and I’m absolutely convinced there are a solid dozen people who’ve purchased made-to-order Strathclyde Regional Council branded bedsheets to coorie into at night.
One stumbling block here was that applying the same formula for Regional Commissioners as the other regions would give massively oversized councils. The region centred on Edinburgh would have had 130 seats, whilst the Glasgow-centric one would have been a jaw-dropping 233 seats. A second issue here was that if I then tried to come up with a shared formula for “Metropolitan Regions”, the fact there’s about a 2:1 size difference between these meant that applying one that fit Glasgow to both made the Edinburgh region feel too small, and applying one that fit Edinburgh makes the Glasgow region too big. In the end, I opted for a separate formula for each.
In both cases the baseline figure is increased and municipalities not meeting the lower threshold are merged, solely for the purposes of regional elections, with neighbouring municipalities as necessary to cross the threshold. That means whereas e.g. Tweeddale and Penicuik have their own Regional Commissioners under my core proposal, in this alternative they have a joint set. That doesn’t impact actual municipal governance, which would remain separate. For the Edinburgh-centred region the baseline is multiplied by 1.5x, so the lower threshold is 30,000 and municipalities gain an additional commissioner every 15,000 residents. In Glasgow it’s 2x, so the numbers are 40,000 and 20,000 respectively. That still gives the latter a large regional council, but it’s only about half the size as simply applying the base model.
As this means the distribution of Regional Commissioners will vary substantially compared to the core region, I’ve provided additional charts that shows the breakdown per municipality or municipal bloc. Similarly, as this impacts on how many municipal councillors each has, and I need to eliminate Independents and micro-parties for a regional vote share in each, there’s a second set of results for each city in the regional scenario.
Capital Region
Key Statistics
Municipalities: 18
Population: 1,021,482
Largest Settlement: Edinburgh
Municipal Councillors: 350
Regional Commissioners: 89
Description
Grafting Edinburgh onto the core Lothian and Borders region creates a Capital Region with a population just over one million, nearly a fifth of the national total. In reality, I’d simply call this region “Lothian and Borders” just like my core proposal region, as that’s what it is. However, I’ve opted for “Capital Region” nomenclature here just so it’s possible to quickly and clearly distinguish between the core Lothian and Border region (without Edinburgh) and this one (with). Although pairing the Borders with Edinburgh isn’t necessarily ideal, they just don’t have a big enough population (about three quarters of Dumfries and Galloway) to feel like a region in themselves. They are also better connected to Edinburgh than D&G is to anywhere larger, and a whole-south Dumfries, Galloway and the Borders region is even more of a historic stretch.
This preserves the same slight proportional flaw versus the core Lothian and Borders version, which is Conservative strength is sufficient to give them a directly elected commissioner in every municipality (or municipal bloc), which then sums up to more than their ideal share. Here that’s just one seat to their advantage and the SNP’s disadvantage.
Projected Overall Municipal Election Results (2022)
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Seats
Projected Overall Regional Election Results (2022)
Votes
Regional Commissioners Distribution
Seats
Party Allocated Levelling Seat
Edinburgh City (Capital Region)
Population: 494,769
Largest Settlement: Edinburgh
Municipal Councillors: 73
Regional Commissioners: 34
This is merely a second instance of Edinburgh’s data, but with the reduced number of councillors as part of the Capital Region, and showing the estimated regional results specifically for Edinburgh.
Projected Municipal Election Results (2022)
Votes
Seats
Projected Regional Election Results (2022)
Votes
Seats
Strathclyde Region
Key Statistics
Municipalities: 33
Population: 1,873,544
Largest Settlement: Glasgow
Municipal Councillors: 689
Regional Commissioners: 125
Description
Some kind of Greater Glasgow or a return of the old Strathclyde Region is a dream held by a not insignificant number of politically engaged folk in and around Scotland’s largest city. We all know there’s at least one person whose life ambition is to lead such a council (though their regular CV-pushing is specifically for a directly elected mayor), and I’m absolutely convinced there are a solid dozen folk who’ve purchased made-to-order Strathclyde Regional Council branded bedsheets to coorie into at night, such is their nostalgia. Although I think such a creation is much trickier than some assume, I do acknowledge there is indeed a reasonable case for integrating certain aspects of public service delivery and planning across the city and its surrounds.
So, fine. Are you happy now, Strathclyde revivalists? This combines the whole of the Lanarkshire, Lennox and Renfrewshire regions from the core proposal with Glasgow to create a sort of “Lesser” Strathclyde. It’s not a complete recreation of the 1973 Act version, lacking both Ayrshire (disconnected and populous enough to stand alone) and Argyll (disconnected and overwhelmingly rural). Even without those, the population here is pushing 1.9 million, which would be nearly twice the size of the Capital Region and just over a third of Scotland’s total population. It’s also got just over a quarter of all the proposed municipalities in Scotland within it. You might think the map above is a bit cramped with all the municipality names on it, and you’d be right, but that’s what happens with a region this size.
This creates a region which broadly reinforces the dominance of the SNP and Labour over the western Central Belt, whilst moderating the other three parties positions relative to the split in the core model. Conservative and Lib Dem influence over the running of Glasgow is heightened but somewhat reduced outside the city, whilst the opposite is true for the Greens. Indeed without a standalone Glasgow, where they are practically non-existent, the Lib Dems would be able to claim representation across all of mainland Scotland in this scenario. The expanded size of the region and thus reduction in proportionality of localised representation within it means that the two local parties at municipal level (West Dunbartonshire Community Party and the British Unionist Party) don’t win regional seats here the way they do in the core model.
Projected Overall Municipal Election Results (2022)
Votes
Seats
Projected Overall Regional Election Results (2022)
Votes
Regional Commissioners Distribution
Seats
Party Allocated Levelling Seat
Glasgow City (Strathclyde Region)
Population: 619,291
Largest Settlement: Glasgow
Municipal Councillors: 85
Regional Commissioners: 32
This is merely a second instance of Glasgow’s data, but with the reduced number of councillors as part of the Strathclyde Region, and showing the estimated regional results specifically for Glasgow.