West Lothian Conservatives celebrated after winning seven seats in the local council elections. They previously had only one seat held by veteran councillor Tom Kerr.
The Conservatives profited as the SNP lost two seats overall and Labour four seats on the 33-seat council.
SNP are still the biggest party with 13 seats followed by Labour with 12, the Conservatives with seven. There is one independent.
Kerr, who has been a one man Tory band on the council for some years, romped home with 3,037 votes.
Also elected in his ward were David Tait (SNP) with 1,160 votes and Tom Conn (Scottish Labour ) with 1,060 votes.
Kerr, who has been Provost of West Lothian and has a background in seafaring and marine consultancy, said: “I’m delighted and I think my majority has gone up by around 40 per cent in the Linlithgow ward.
“The electorate appreciate the work I have done over the past few years but I am also delighted in the way the overall vote for the Scottish Conservatives has gone up.
“It is showing up in seats being won and we can see some changes happening in West Lothian.”
The former parliamentary candidate for Aberdeen and Kincardine and also Linlithgow, added: “I have been through the hard times in the party and this is unquestionably one of the best times in my political life.
“I am over the moon about getting more than one councillor onto West Lothian Council and I know every single one of our candidates are going to be good councillors.”
The 70-year-old said: “The issues on the doorstep were primarily local issues and we have got some ideas on issues including council tax, transport and education.
“If we have to have discussions with another party we will certainly be pushing forward our programme to see where we can come to some sort of agreement.”
National issues did come up during the local election campaign and he said: “I had an SNP colleague approach me at the count saying he was appalled that the national leadership had brought national issues about the Referendum into the local government elections.
“I reminded that individual that we did not call for a Referendum in 18 months time. The trigger for that was undoubtedly Nicola Sturgeon.”
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