Candidates face a long road to the polls on May 3 as they trek across Highland landscape

There is a joke doing the rounds in the north that two of the newly drawn Highland Council wards could probably enter teams in football's World Cup, because the area they cover is as large as those sporting giants, San Marino and Andorra.

For example, the Wester Ross, Strathpeffer and Lochalsh ward stretches from Achiltibuie in the north, to Glenelg and Loch Hourn in the south, and almost to Strathpeffer in the east. Four councillors will represent a population of around 11,750.

Next door, the North West and Central Sutherland ward covers about the same geographical area, embracing almost all of the north-west corner of Scotland, but boasting a population of just over 6000 who will be represented by three councillors.

These are just two of the 22 council wards replacing the 80 single-member constituencies which have consistently returned a clear majority of independent councillors on Highland Council. It was the same on its predecessor body, Highland Region.

Their numerical supremacy has been overwhelming. On the council just dissolved, they had more than twice the total of three parties.

But the Highland independents were never like other independents. They never formed an administration nor an opposition and, until last autumn, when the spectre of the new multi-member ward loomed, they had never even met as a group.

In fact, the political groupings did not display any great evidence of party organisation either. After each election, there would be a few days when the most ambitious councillors and former office bearers would jostle for the chairmanships and vice-chairmanships of committees, seeking support from any and every quarter.

This process would be across parties and often relied more on loose geographic alliances: remote west coast councillors, for example, having shared interests, while traditionally the Caithness councillors thought everyone was against them, and anyway they wanted a return to the old days of Caithness County Council.

After May 3, there will certainly still be the jockeying for position, with the 20 councillors who win a title receiving a special responsibility allowance (SRA) almost doubling their basic salary of £15,495.

But, for the first time, it is conceivable that Highland could have an organised administration or opposition, even both.

Inevitably, the independents will have the largest number of councillors, but everything depends on how they respond to the new political landscape.

The LibDems have publicly declared: "We intend to provide leadership to the new council, working in a spirit of co-operation with all those who share our vision for the Highlands."

But the most they could possibly win would be 24 (they have two candidates in two wards) on an 80-member council. The SNP, with a candidate in each ward, could win only 22 and the same goes for Labour.

In the past council, the LibDems had the most widely spread representation, from Wick to Ardnamurchan and Skye to Cromarty.

So they would seem the most likely party to prosper under the multi-member system, although the SNP's surge in the polls cannot be ignored.

But many of the leading independents would see any kind of political control as an anathema.

So the LibDems may yet plump for trying to act as a disciplined opposition, promoting their own programme in the face of the council's ad hoc approach to governance.

One issue will have to be resolved is whether the council's tradition of vice-convener becoming the next convener is to continue. Sutherland councillor Alison Magee has just stepped down from the convener's chair and the council to go off to chair the Big Lottery Fund's Scottish committee.

The present number two is Dr Michael Foxley, one of the council's great characters whose advocacy for the remote, rural communities on the west coast has been a feature of council business for the past 21 years.

He is the second longest serving councillor, having been elected in 1986, but he is the newly appointed leader of the Liberal Democrats.

Whether the independents would be happy with a party political animal at their head, remains to be seen.