That was the dramatic year that was . . . Alex Cole Hamilton

​​Remember when the news was normal? Boring even? Times before Brexit, Covid and the annual Tory Christmas psychodrama?

Liberal Democrats won the Corstorphine/Murrayfield by-election, making them the second biggest party on Edinburgh City Council. Lib Dem candidate Fiona Bennett took 56 per cent of first-preference votes

Those wishing for a humdrum 2023 and a chance to recharge after several of the most bizarre years in human history were to be sorely disappointed.

This was the year horrific bloodshed returned to Israel and Gaza, and the war on the Eastern Front of Ukraine ground slowly on.

The term ‘AI’ (artificial intelligence) was declared word of 2023 by dictionary publisher Collins. But because the global scientific community is still uncertain as to whether cutting edge "large language models" will be our salvation or our undoing, that verdict offers only unsettling portents to many.

Meanwhile, households grappled with the fallout from Liz Truss' mortgage bombshell, the impact of soaring energy prices and brutal year-on-year inflation. And yet, in the face of all of this, both the SNP at Holyrood and the Conservatives at Westminster allowed internal party divisions to override the needs of everyday Scots as they lurched from crisis to crisis with ever increasing chaos.

Now more than ever people are crying out for a political party that will rise to these challenges and put country before party. That’s why people across the country are turning to the Liberal Democrats.

We’ve scored a clutch of stonking parliamentary by-election upsets, overturning huge Conservative majorities and prompting politics guru, Sir John Curtice to exclaim that “The Liberal Democrats have been making the spectacular look routine.”

The lethal threat of the pandemic appeared to subside in large part this year. That is thanks to the tireless work of thousands of medical professionals who helped to ensure that all those at risk were offered booster vaccines.

However we must not ignore what the virus can become. The awful and debilitating condition that is Long Covid is still stubbornly with us and the Scottish Government are still doing far too little for the tens of thousands of Scots who have seen their lives and livelihoods ruined by it.

While the viral threat has subsided, we have been forced to relive every aspect of the pandemic through the deliberations of the UK Covid Inquiry. WhatsApps and diary entries from those making the decisions in Downing Street revealed a toxic, misogynistic culture of dither and indecision, but at least they revealed something.

Sadly we may never have a complete picture of the decision making in Scotland, after it emerged that Nicola Sturgeon and her advisers were systematically deleting their pandemic era messages.

In Scotland, the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon as First Minister started a political earthquake that has wounded the SNP and perhaps mortally so. But that was as nothing when compared to the impact of her subsequent arrest and that of other senior figures in the SNP. While the investigation into those matters is still ongoing, the effect on public confidence in the party of government which once seemed unassailable has been stark.

After 16 years in power the SNP seem to be in abject decline and their woeful record on public service delivery is now laid bare to everyone who had until recently been giving them the benefit of the doubt.

What all this means for next year I will speculate on in this column in the coming weeks, but for now may I wish you and those you love a very Merry Christmas.