Candidates must win the Gaelic vote in island hotbed of political intrigue
THE Western Isles will still be an independently controlled council after the election, despite the area being a hotbed of political intrigue which has recently seen the SNP leader on the comhairle being expelled by his party's national leadership.
But it will be unrecognisable in other ways. If he is returned, Alex MacDonald, until last month the convener, will be the only member to have been a councillor when the old Western Isles Council lost £24m in the BCCI crash of 1991. The councillor for Carloway on the west of Lewis, he will be standing in the new three-member Uig and North Lochs ward, one of nine which will return 31 councillors.
