These included changes to the arrangements for student contributions to higher education costs (although whether that amounted to the claimed achievement of having abolished tuition fees was hotly contested), free personal care for the elderly and (during the second coalition government) changing the system of elections for Scottish local authorities to the single transferable vote, a long-standing Liberal Democrat policy.
[18] Scott resigned as party leader on 7 May,[19] and the resulting leadership election was won by Willie Rennie ten days later.
The party lost 10 of its 11 MPs at the 2015 general election with only Alistair Carmichael narrowly retaining his seat, holding Orkney and Shetland with a 3.6% majority.
While it regained the two constituency seats of Edinburgh Western and North East Fife from the SNP, its vote share fell slightly overall.
At the 2017 general election, the party retained Orkney and Shetland with an increased majority, as well as regaining three seats lost to the SNP in 2015 – Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, East Dunbartonshire and Edinburgh West.
The Scottish Liberal Democrats lost out on the North East Fife constituency to Stephen Gethins of the SNP by just two votes, making it the most marginal result in the UK at the general election that year.
Following the election, Rennie resigned as leader, and was replaced by Alex Cole-Hamilton in August 2021 after he stood to run unopposed.
[26] After winning 87 council seats in the 2022 Scottish local elections, an increase from 67 in 2017, party leader Alex Cole-Hamilton announced a target of 150 councillors by 2027.
[28] They held the successors to their four seats which had their boundaries redrawn and gained an additional two by taking Mid Dunbartonshire and Ross, Skye and Lochaber from the SNP.
[29] Due to the reduction of House of Common seats in the 2023 Boundary Review, many news organisations would report the results as two holds and four gains.
ASLDC works alongside Liberal Democrats in the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (CoSLA) where Peter Barrett is leader of the Lib Dem Group.
It has traditionally argued for both positive and negative liberties, tolerance of social diversity, decentralisation of political authority, including proportional representation for public elections, internationalism and greater involvement in the European Union.
In the 2007 elections it campaigned for reforms to public services and local taxation, and for more powers for the Scottish Parliament within a federal Britain.
[35] In the Scottish Parliament election later that year, their manifesto pledges included training more mental health specialists, an NHS recovery plan after the COVID-19 pandemic, investing in low carbon heat networks, new national parks, a universal basic income, play-based education, opposing a second independence referendum and moving homes to zero-emission heating.