GLASGOW is not a nationalist city and voted Yes in last year's independence referendum out of an appetite for change, the new leader of the country's largest council has said.

In his first in-depth interview since taking the biggest job in Scottish local government, Frank McAveety said he had inherited a pro-independence city because voters wanted a different style of politics.

Describing himself as a "believer in making big shifts", he question whether First Minister Nicola Sturgeon had delivered for constituents in Glasgow, accusing her of a "selfie" approach to politics.

Questioning the impact the SNP has had in its eight years in power, the Glasgow City Council leader accused it of taking "a showbiz variety of what it is to be a Government", adding that it created an illusion of change but shied away from major decisions.

Mr McAveety also said the victory of Jeremy Corbyn as UK Labour leader and his brand of politics was something his administration had to respond to.

The former Scottish Executive minister and MSP took the reigns at Glasgow a fortnight ago following the decision by predecessor Gordon Matheson to stand down after his failed bid to become Scottish Labour's deputy boss.

Since then he has been taking stock of the scale of his challenge in both running the country's largest city in the context of dwindling financial resources and being the figurehead for Labour at a time when it looks like losing control of Glasgow for the first time in four decades.

Speaking ahead of his first council official business as leader, Mr McAveety said he had "clear ambitions" which would materialise in the coming months over what the council under his leadership would do.

He said local government had caught itself in a "Gordian knot" with the Scottish Government over finances and was seeking a meeting with Ms Sturgeon to discuss areas of mutual interest.

But claiming politicians have "danced around (local government cash) for generations", he added: "There's a commission out just now which does what the SNP always does: they create a variety of minuets in the room but when the music stops has anything really changed?

"That's my concern about the SNP, they keep the dishes spinning all the time but actually making that big concrete decision about where we need to go."

Quizzed on whether he expected Glasgow to benefit from having the First Minister's constituency in the city and with two elections on the horizon, Mr McAveety said: "I want to engage with the First Minister on that and have already written to her and asked her for a meeting.

"You don't need to be a rocket scientist to work out the local authority areas with the greatest economic and social challenges.

"But when people have been Cities Minister how often were they in the country's biggest city to discuss what differences they could make. Anyone elected by Glaswegians should have an honest engagement with the city council leader in respect of that."

He added: I'm a Glasgow nationalist in the sense that I think its the best job in Scotland. But equally there's a massive political challenge out there.

"The FM seems to have filled a fair amount of newspaper pages with her selfie approach to politics.

"I'm a product of a city that gave opportunity because of the values of the Labour Party. And I don't believe its a city defined by nationalism. The Yes vote that was narrowly returned was because people wanted politics to be different and they also wanted people committed to 'how do we build fairness and opportunity'."

He said one of the "astonishing" reasons for the rise of support for Jeremy Corbyn was the "scunnered factor after the economic crisis where people think those responsible have not been held responsible".

Claiming social media was also changing politics, he added: "It can only be a good thing that 550,000 participated in a process to select the Labour Party's UK leader and he gets a thumping majority. That's a hell of an achievement and a hell of a lot of people looking for change. We need to be responding to that."

Glasgow's SNP group leader Susan Aitken said: “Frank McAveety’s astonishing arrogance is all-too-typical from Labour in Scotland. Mr McAveety may be content to stick his fingers in his ears and attempt to ignore reality but he simply won’t be able to avoid his own party’s legacy of failure in our city, compared to the SNP’s record of delivery in government."