East Ayrshire Council 2022

Covering the bulk of inland Ayrshire, East Ayrshire is the only one of the modern trio of councils that isn’t simply a renamed version of a 1973 district. Instead, it was formed from an amalgamation of two of them. The more urbanised northern portion was previously the Kilmarnock and Loudon district. Kilmarnock itself is one of the largest towns in the country, and is orbited by Stewarton and the string of villages in the Irvine Valley. A more expansive and rural southern portion comes from the old Cumnock and Doon Valley district. Cumnock is a much smaller town than Kilmarnock, and there are plenty of mid-sized villages through this area with strong mining associations.

At Westminster the constituencies covering these areas were consistently Labour for decades too, until the SNP’s 2015 victory, though this had been Jim Sillars’ heartland when he launched the short lived “Scottish Labour Party” in the 70’s. He failed to hold his seat, but they did win 2 seats in the Cumnock district in 1977. For Holyrood both seats remained with Labour until the SNP won the Kilmarnock seat in 2007, winning both consistently from 2011 onwards.

Both of the predecessor districts were highly Labour favourable through their history, especially in the Cumnock end where the party always had a majority. In Kilmarnock the Conservatives tied with Labour in 1977, whilst the SNP ran a close second in 1992. Following the merger of the two districts into the modern East Ayrshire, Labour continued to be the clear majority party.