If you need any confirmation of what a brutal business politics can be, just ask David Renard.

At the start of 2023 Mr Renard was in his tenth year as leader of Swindon Borough Council, and was a leading spokesman on environment for the Local Government Association.

As the year closes, Mr Renard is not only not leader of the council, but he’s also not a councillor at all. He lost his Haydon Wick seat in May’s election in a landslide for Labour that put opponent Jim Robbins into the leader’s office.

And if anyone involved in local government and politics in Swindon, including journalists, needed a lesson in quite how most people see us – BBC Radio 4’s flagship news and current affairs programme PM spoke to a hand-picked group of voters before that election about the issues facing the town.

At the end of the piece, presenter Evan Davis asked who the leader of the council was. Not one of the panel could say, and the only name offered was a hesitant suggestion of Sir Robert Buckland, who is South Swindon MP and not a member of the borough council.

That election, and Swindon’s well-earned reputation as a bellwether for the country, meant, for the months before the May elections, that Swindon was one of the frequent destinations on the sat navs of leading Labour politicians.

Between August 2022 and the elections, Labour leader Keir Starmer and shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves made a couple of visits, and they were joined by deputy party leader Angela Rayner when all three launched the party’s national campaign in the town centre.

A change of party in power for the first time in two decades was not where the changes stopped.

The new administration overhauled the scrutiny committee system. Six overview and scrutiny committees were folded into one, with its meetings being much longer, and three policy formulation committees were set up.

They feature backbench councillors from both Labour and Conservatives coming up with ideas to take forward on one of the three missions of the council - building a better Swindon, combatting inequality, and achieving net zero carbon emissions.

Those committees have begun work, but it’s probably fair to say they’ve taken time to bed in, and real results have yet to be seen.

And the new administration has even changed the electoral system. After elections in 2024, there will be a year off, and then in 2026 all 57 councillors, even those elected in 2024, will be up again for election.

There will also be a redrawing of ward boundaries.

And then the next election will be in 2030 as the council has moved to an all-out every four years system.

When the measure was agreed in the council chamber there were some wry smiles from those who remembered Labour councillors, then in opposition, scuppering exactly the same proposal made by the Conservative administration in 2019, as it needs a two-third majority to approve such a change, not a simple 51-49 majority.

The change in administration has led to a recurring theme politically.

The new administration has inherited both opportunities and also significant challenges from the Conservatives – particularly when it comes to the council’s budget.

When issues arise, as they did spectacularly with bin collections, with thousands of houses missed for several weeks over the summer, Conservative councillors criticise the new cabinet, while the cabinet members say the problems are caused by a very stretched budget, blaming both the previous Conservative cabinet, and the current Conservative government.