LABOUR is expecting further misery at the polls as Glasgow prepares to vote in a local election for the first time since the independence referendum.

Four by-elections will be held across Glasgow on Thursday, with any result impacting on the council's simmering leadership crisis and sounding the starting pistol for the battle to control the city in 2017.

The polls have been triggered by the election of two former SNP councillors to Westminster, as well as the standing down of Green and Nationalist members on health grounds.

The votes are the most significant of around a dozen by-elections held throughout Scotland over the summer and early autumn following May's SNP landslide and several senior Labour sources have indicated they do not expect the party to pick up any seats.

It comes amid pressure to oust the Labour leader of the council Gordon Matheson, who will find out the following week if he has been elected deputy leader of the Scottish party and who has announced his intentions to stand as a MSP.

It has also emerged that Labour's largest Scottish donor had given £4,500 towards Mr Matheson's campaign to become the party's number two north of the border.

The donation by fridge magnate Sir Willie Haughey clearly marks Mr Matheson as the choice of the internal Labour Party machinery to become deputy.

But sources have said a poor performance in the by-elections, all taking place in the wards of 'big-hitter' Labour councillors, including Mr Matheson's Anderston and City area, would inevitably heap further pressure on the council leader to bring forward his timetable for departure.

Mr Matheson has said he will stand down at his group's next AGM, but the outcome of the by-elections and the Labour leadership contest could see that brought forward to within the next month, sources claim.

Any contest is likely to be between former Scottish Executive minister Frank McAveety and current education convener Stephen Curran.

One said: "It's a strange one. We've no seats to lose. But it's difficult not to see how a poor performance won't hasten the calls for Gordon to go sooner rather than later."

Another said: "We've traditionally been good at by-elections and had a great campaign to win the council in 2012.

"But the world has changed in less than a year. People still seem to want to vote SNP, they've got the membership to deal with the impact of low-turn out and the political landscape is against us.

"No-one thinks we'll lose all four because of Gordon. We're having a rough time across the UK. But inevitably it will come into the leadership mix."

Another Labour source added: "At least our candidates can't be accused of being careerists."

The by-elections are being held in Craigton, Calton, Langside and Anderston. They come as the SNP reclaimed its two Aberdeen seats in a by-election in the city on Thursday, securing over 50 per cent and 60 per cent of first preference votes.

The party also secured another by-election win in North Lanarkshire last month with a swing of over 25 per cent.

The SNP said optimistic about retaining all three seats it has vacated, Glasgow group leader Susan Aitken claiming: "We are getting a very encouraging response from voters who are responding enthusiastically to the SNP's ideas for giving Glasgow back to the people after decades of Labour treating the city like their private fiefdom but we're taking nothing for granted.

"Labour's complacency and arrogance in taking Glasgow's voters for granted is what's got them in the sorry state they're in now, and we have no intention of repeating their mistakes."

A Labour spokesman said: "Labour's candidates have fought strong, locally focussed campaigns to try and win these seats from the Scottish Green Party and the SNP.

"If we succeed in taking seats then we increase Labour's majority even further. If not then we retain our commanding council majority with 45 members."