GORDON Matheson has announced he will step down as leader of Glasgow City Council next month and return to the back benches.

His aim he says will be to represent the people of his city centre ward until he decides what to do next.

Whatever happens, he insists he will not be a candidate at the next local government elections in 2017. And who can blame him.

Mr Matheson has spent the past 16 years of his life as a councillor and over that time has been relentlessly enthusiastic about his home city.

He has a passion for Glasgow and its people which almost two decades as a councillor has failed to dampen.

As well as being council leader for the past five years, he has also held the two other top jobs in the City Chambers.

As education convener he was the politician responsible for the city's schools and as City Treasurer he had to keep an eye on Glasgow's £1billion plus budget.

Mr Matheson has decided to step down now to give the new leader a decent run-in to the 2017 election.

So far, former Leader and MSP Frank McAveety, education spokesman Stephen Curran and social work spokesman Malcolm Cunning have thrown their hats into the ring for the top job.

They have until September 9 to persuade their colleagues they are the right man to take over the role of council leader.

But whoever is successful is facing a challenge Labour could never have anticipated.

At present, the party has 45 of the 79 seats on the council giving it an overall majority.

But if the SNP juggernaut continues flattening everything in its path, it is more than possible the new leader could find himself leading the opposition in the City Chambers for the first time in decades.

The last time any any party other than Labour had overall control of the council was almost half a century ago when the Progressives managed to snatch the reins of power.

They lasted for only a year before it was all change and again no one group was in charge.

However Labour has ruled Glasgow without a break for the past 35 years with Gordon Matheson only the seventh leader during that time.

But if the party needed proof that things can change overnight they only need to revisit the general election results in May when the SNP picked up every seat in the city.

Who knows what will happen when voters go to the polls for the Holyrood elections next year and the local government elections the following year.

But at least Mr Matheson knows someone else will be in the hotseat if Labour finds itself on the opposition benches.