Labour’s win at the local elections this week means there will be a change in administration at Euclid Street. 

The majority gained by Labour of nine is more than sufficiently large enough to put to bed any speculations about whether there would need to be deals and negotiations by the parties to be able to form a working administration. 

So what happens now? 

In some ways, not very much. In other ways, there will be a lot going on. 

Officially, procedurally, nothing has really changed since the results on Friday, and won’t for another fortnight. 

And there will have to be three more elections to go through before we can definitively name the new council leader. 

First, the Labour and Conservative groups will have to select their leaders, the Conservatives will do so on Tuesday and Labour on Wednesday. 

Having lost former council leader David Renard as a councillor the Conservatives will have to select a new leader. 

Labour’s meeting is on Wednesday.  

Current leader Jim Robbins has put his name forward, but it’s possible that other councillors will challenge him. 

 And while it would seem extraordinary for the party to unseat a leader who has led them to their first victory in Swindon in 20 years, this sort of thing has happened before. 

(It was Andrew McIntosh who won the Greater London Council election in 1981 for Labour, only to be deposed as group and therefore GLC leader the very next day by Ken Livingston, who went on to lead the GLC for seven years and subsequently was London Mayor for two terms.) 

Once the parties have their leaders settled, there is, procedurally, a pause until the annual council meeting on Friday May 19. 

 There, the councillors will be asked to choose a leader. 

Labour will put forward their nomination. There will be a vote, and unless something extraordinary has happened, the Labour leader will be elected as leader of the council. 

He or she will then select a cabinet and the work of the council will fully resume as normal. 

Until then, officially, the authority will continue as it did for the month-long pre-election period. Things still happen, work still gets done – but no big decisions are made, no large allocations of money are decided. Officers keep the ship on a steady course and an even keel. 

 Behind the scenes things will be busier. After Wednesday the Labour group leader will be having meetings with the chief executive, briefings on the budget and the finances and there will be discussions between senior officers and Labour’s leadership team about the direction of policy the new administration should take. 

It will be the aim of the new administration to set a new course as soon as possible after May 19. 

But for the next two weeks the council is in a holding pattern until all the procedural boxes are ticked.