SCOTTISH Labour is set to come third behind the Tories in next year’s council elections in a repeat of their humiliation at Holyrood, the country’s leading polling expert has said.

Professor John Curtice said recent council by-election results had been “uniformly appalling” for Labour and indicated the party would suffer a 13 per cent swing to the SNP.

That would see Labour’s vote share fall from the 31 per cent it achieved in 2012 to around 18 per cent, roughly the same as the Conservatives are expected to poll.

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Prof Curtice, of Strathclyde University's politics department, said the SNP could win outright majorities in around a dozen of Scotland’s 32 councils, up from two at present, and emerge as the largest party in almost a dozen more.

All but one of Scotland’s cities is predicted to be SNP-run after next May.

The party already runs Dundee and Perth, but would also take over in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling, only missing out on Inverness as it is part of the wider Highland authority.

Meanwhile Labour would lose control of 16 councils it currently runs by itself or as the lead partner in a coalition, including its past strongholds of North and South Lanarkshire.

When Prof Curtice presented the data to council leaders on the Labour-dominated Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (Cosla) recently, it was received in an “incredible silence”, he said, adding: “I was telling a large number of people in the room that they were stuffed.”

Sharing the results with The Herald, he said: “The Labour party will be struggling to avoid coming third in terms of votes in the Scottish local government elections. On my extrapolation, the SNP probably should be winning about a dozen councils with a majority, probably be the largest group on around another dozen, and Cosla falls into their hands.”

The findings coincide with grim news today for Scottish Labour on the parliamentary front.

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The party’s sole surviving MP, Ian Murray, is set to lose his Edinburgh South seat under proposed boundary changes, forcing him to challenge a sitting SNP MP to survive.

However Prof Curtice said the SNP’s expected dominance of councils and Cosla was also double-edged, as it would mean more arguments within the SNP over money and policy.

The government is planning to cut the local government budget by £500m this parliament, and SNP ministers increasingly want to bypass councils on education and childcare delivery.

There is also a fierce row over ministers wresting control of £100m raised each year in council tax for education.

Prof Curtice said: “It raises all sorts of interesting questions about the future relationship between the government and local government. Arguably it’s going to be much more difficult to cut the knees from under your political friends than it is at the moment, when you’re cutting the knees off your political opponents. If the SNP end up running large swathes of local government after next spring, the arguments will become internal to the party.”

If the predictions come to pass, it would increase pressure on Kezia Dugdale to step down and could prompt a leadership challenge.

Labour has already fallen to third place at Holyrood on her watch, slipping from 37 to 24 MSPs, while the Tories rose from 15 to 31.

However the improved showing for the Tories would not necessarily translate into the party controlling more councils.

Prof Curtice said they were likely to be the largest party in East Renfrewshire, and possibly in South Ayrshire, but had few other prospects.

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In the 2012 council election, the SNP won the largest share of the vote (32.4 per cent to Labour’s 31.4) and had over a third of Scotland 1222 councillors (425 to Labour’s 394).

However after political horse-trading by the Unionist parties, the Nationalists emerged in control of nine councils to Labour’s 15.

An SNP spokesperson said: “We of course take nothing for granted, but with public support remaining strong after two incredible national elections we are preparing for our largest ever council election campaign. Council by-elections over the past two years have been hugely encouraging and we’ll hope to build on these successes next year."

Tory spokesman Graham Simpson said: “Given we finished comfortably ahead of Labour in the Holyrood elections, it would be no surprise to see that replicated at council levels. Voters want someone who’ll stand up for their local communities, their local economy, and Scotland’s place in the UK. That’s why we picked up so much support in May, and hope to do so again in 2017.”

A Scottish Labour spokesman said: “People are beginning to take a fresh look at Labour in Scotland. Scottish Labour will offer a real alternative to Tory and SNP austerity in next year’s local elections. Scottish Labour will fight to stop the cuts to the local services we all rely on, like education and social care.”