Stirling & Strathallan.

Stirling and Strathallan stretches across central Scotland, a seat of roughly 102,000 people drawn on the 2023 boundaries with a median age of 44 and an electorate of around 76,000. It is not a single-town constituency: the urban core around Stirling gives way to the smaller centres of Dunblane and Bridge of Allan and a wide rural hinterland reaching into Strathallan. The seat straddles two local authorities, both Scottish councils running the full range of services. Seven of its wards sit within Stirling Council, with a single ward falling under Perth and Kinross, making this a place administered from two directions rather than one.

That split is mirrored in a fragmented local politics. Across the most recent ward contests the seat divides three ways, with the SNP and the Conservatives each carrying a comparable share of wards and Labour close behind. Most of those contests date to 2022, though Dunblane and Bridge of Allan returned a Labour winner more recently, in 2024. The parliamentary picture is finely balanced: at the 2024 general election, the first fought on these boundaries, Labour took the seat on about 34 per cent with the SNP a little under three points behind. Chris Kane has held it for Labour since, one strand in a contest that no party dominates.

On the figures available the seat reads as genuinely contested rather than settled, a Labour gain held by a slim margin over an SNP that remains within reach. Recent local coverage has had a largely administrative tenor, turning on council costs, charges and the practical business of two authorities rather than any single controversy. With ward strength split three ways and a parliamentary margin of only a few points, the seat sits in flux, its direction likely to be tested whenever its constituent parts next go to the polls.