LABOUR isn’t the only big loser of 2016. Wherever there is failure, there is also David Coburn.

It wasn’t long ago that the Ukip Scotland leader and his boss Nigel Farage were talking up the prospect of five or six MSPs. And on paper, the election was tailor-made for Ukip.

Hanging over the entire campaign was the referendum on EU membership, the party’s pet subject. Holyrood’s proportional voting system also put list seats within their grasp.

Several MSPs have previously been elected on 5.2 per cent of the list vote.

When Coburn became Scotland’s first Ukip MEP in 2014, he polled twice that, 10.4 per cent, and the support was evenly spread across the country. So the chance was there.

Instead, Ukip blew it. In interview after interview, and an excruciating TV debate performance, Coburn showed how little he knew of Scottish politics and the workings of Holyrood.

Rather than doing voters the basic courtesy of learning what an MSP’s job might entail, he showed near contempt by admitting he often made things up simply to generate publicity.

It was an approach that proved unpopular inside Ukip Scotland as well. The party has been in “special measures” since late 2013 because of feuding between Coburn’s clique and others.

This suspension of internal democracy - Ukip Scotland no longer holds AGMs and is effectively run from south of the border - left Coburn in charge of the candidate selection process.

When he appointed himself top of the most propitious list, Highlands & Islands, and many of his cronies on top or near the top of other lists, it caused yet more infighting and resignations.

In the closing days of the campaign, with the polls showing Ukip struggling north of the border, several prominent candidates and activists called on Coburn to quit. He accused them of trying to wreck the party, apparently oblivious to the fact the party was already a wreck.

The numbers on Thursday said it all. In Wales, Ukip achieved a genuine breakthrough, winning seven seats in the 60-member Assembly, with around 13 per cent of the vote. In Scotland, though, Ukip averaged 2 per cent of the vote and failed to win a single seat.

Even in the Highlands & Islands, where Coburn stood, it polled just 2.6 per cent.

“I ran a brilliant campaign,” Coburn told the Sunday Herald, insisting he would “absolutely” remain as leader, and his critics would be driven from the party.

“The trouble is we got squished by people voting to stop the SNP. They went for the biggest weapon to hand, the Conservatives, and you had Labour people holding their noses and voting for them. It’s just the zeitgeist. You can’t win them all.

“Nobody is blaming me. Maybe seven people out of a thousand. These are people who have actually never done anything. Some of them are not exactly keen on homosexuals as well [Coburn is gay]. It’s all ego and me, me, me. What they wanted to do was harm the party.”

As well as the failure of Ukip on the right, there was the smaller-scale failure of the Left.

Tommy Sheridan’s Solidarity outpolled the new socialists on the block, RISE, but the convicted perjurer failed to win a place on the Glasgow list, spelling the end of his political career.

In January, his wife and campaign manager Gail said her husband, who has not won an election in 13 years, would “no longer be involved in politics” if he was rejected again.

She said: “If less than 6 out of every 100 voters in Glasgow can’t be bothered voting for him, the message will be clear. He is not valued enough and we [his family] will demand he comes home to us permanently. If the people of Glasgow don’t want him, that’s fine. We do.”

Sheridan, 52, had advocated voting for the SNP in constituencies and Solidarity on the list.

After the result, he tweeted bitterly: “#GlasgowYES City just elected 6 unionists on the List. SNP 1&2??? Well done guys. Your concern for the YES Family was underwhelming #Poor.”

Solidarity’s 0.6 per cent of the national vote still topped RISE’s 0.5 per cent, however, although the new party did beat Solidarity in two regions, including the Lothians, where Colin Fox, Sheridan’s former nemesis in the Scottish Socialist Party, was the lead RISE candidate.

In the North East, the Scottish National Front beat RISE by 617 votes to 599.

RISE organiser Jonathon Shafi insisted the party would continue long-term. Given the fissile nature of the Scottish Left, that may be a struggle. But RISE’s formation has allowed Fox’s generation of socialists to pass the baton to a younger one exemplified by Cat Boyd, who received 2500 votes in Glasgow.

The Scottish Christian Party and Women’s Equality Party polled 0.5 and 0.3 per cent.