THE Liberal Democrats who once had overall control of the council have been wiped from Inverclyde's electoral map.

All of the party's candidates were dumped by the local electorate in the wake of veteran Ciano Rebecchi deciding to retire after 34 years in the Municipal Buildings' corridors of power.

Alasdair Higgins — who was standing in Mr Rebecchi's Inverclyde South West ward — polled only 251 votes from the 4,061 ballots cast.

He said afterwards: "We will have to have a debrief and see where things went wrong and take it from there.

"I will be licking my wounds for a while, but we will be back."

Colleague Jacci Stoyle added: "I think we had a good campaign and we worked hard and received positive comments on the doorsteps.

"We will still have a voice in Inverclyde, we haven't gone away, but I think it's reasonable to say we are disappointed."

The Lib Dems controlled the council from 2003 to 2007 and former provost Mr Rebecchi was left to rue his party's rout.

He said: "The worst thing that happened was that Nick Clegg went into coalition with the Tories at Westminster in 2010 — that was the start of the decline.

"There has to be a difference between local and national politics.

"No matter what, we here in Inverclyde have got to work together for our communities.

"People are more important than party politics."

Mr Rebecchi added: "History proves that we have our ups and downs and this is a down.

"We have to make sure that Inverclyde is the priority, not national politics, and we have to think about how we can make our area better."