Angus Council 2022

By Scottish standards Angus is a mid-sized council, larger and more rural than your average Central Belt local authority, but smaller and more urbanised than the true giants like Highland, Aberdeenshire or Dumfries and Galloway. Fisheries and farming have long been important to this area, with Arbroath almost as renowned for its smokies as the much-quoted Declaration of 1320. Other major coastal towns include Carnoustie and Montrose, whilst Forfar and Brechin are the main settlements in the interior. In addition, as compared to the previous Angus district, the modern council reclaimed Monifieth and a bunch of the Sidlaw villages from Dundee.

That mix of small-to-medium towns with particular specialisms and large rural farming tracts naturally lent itself to a long history of Conservative representation. The SNP would briefly upend that in one constituency in the second of 1974’s Westminster elections, before more firmly establishing themselves in 1987. Whilst the Holyrood seats haven’t ever been anything but SNP held, the Conservatives did briefly gain the UK Angus seat in their 2017 surge, but it slipped away in 2019.

Local elections demonstrated a similar trend, as the Conservatives led the local district for the first three elections it existed. The SNP overtook them for the last three starting in 1984, when it was their only majority in the country. That majority persisted through the three FPTP elections after reorganisation, with the Conservatives faring consistently poorly despite Angus re-gaining Dundee’s rural hinterlands.