THE Scottish Parliament elections may be done and dusted, but voters are not yet finished going to the polls.
“We are literally running through the tape past the finish line,” Richard Thomson, the SNP candidate for Aberdeen South, said.
The former MP for Gordon is aiming to return to Westminster in a by-election on June 18, called after now-Scottish Transport Secretary Stephen Flynn took up a seat at Holyrood.
To do so, however, he must win a by-election which captures many of the tensions shaping modern Scottish politics: oil and gas, a “just transition”, net zero, economic security, and independence.
There is also the fallout from Peter Murrell's embezzlement to contend with – but Thomson said the former SNP chief executive’s crimes were “not really” coming up in conversations with voters despite “pretty much wall-to-wall coverage in certain quarters”.
“Ultimately what puts food on people's tables and pays their mortgage isn't opinions about Peter Murrell's grotesque breach of trust,” he said. “The economic situation in Aberdeen, primarily above all else, is what is coming up.”
Despite Labour coming second in Aberdeen South in the 2024 General Election, Thomson’s biggest challengers are expected to be the Tories.
Shadow Scottish secretary Andrew Bowie gave a glimpse into his party’s strategy book in an article for ConservativeHome last week, where he explicitly tried to tie Murrell’s guilty plea to the by-election and called for a Westminster probe into the SNP’s finances.
The Tory MP elsewhere claimed that a new investigation could examine “failings in financial governance” that the police did not, as well as ensure “lessons are learned not just by the SNP but by all political parties”.
Thomson said he would not support a Westminster inquiry into the SNP – but floated the idea of a wider-reaching probe examining all political party funding.
“Frankly I don't see what locus any Westminster committee might have into looking at the internal workings of a particular political party,” the SNP candidate said.
“I think that any further work that needs to be done round about that is for the SNP and their membership to resolve internally.”
He went on: “It's certainly not the job of any committee at Westminster to be considering what would be a purely partisan and performative investigation of issues that have already been gone into thoroughly by Police Scotland. I agree with John Curtice, there would be absolutely no precedent for anything like that.
“But if you wanted to look at political parties plural, I would suggest modestly that if Westminster wished to concern itself with the probity and governance of political parties, then a good place to start might be at the donations as the source of income for political parties.
“For example, the way that the Conservatives and the Labour Party have openly sold peerages and knighthoods across many years to fill their party coffers, that is something that's certainly worthy of a full parliamentary inquiry.
“But simply to try and single out one political party because it suits the majority of members in that parliament to do so, I think people will view that very cynically.”
Elsewhere in his article, Bowie called for “every pro-UK and pro-North Sea oil and gas voter” to back his party. The message was telling: the Tories are worried about the Unionist vote being split by Reform UK, and are trying to paint themselves as the primary challenger to the SNP.
A divide in the Unionist vote could help Thomson to victory, but the SNP candidate said he wasn’t banking on anything but his own campaigning.
“I'm content to let them scrap it out,” he said. “It's quite clear that Reform and the Tories are having a rival tussle between them over whatever votes they think they can get, but I'm concentrating on what is coming up for me on the doorsteps …
“I've been around a long time in politics and I've learned that the way you win elections is by concentrating on what you do yourself.”
In what may also prove helpful for the SNP, the Tories have fielded MSP Douglas Lumsden as their candidate.
In a move which Thomson described as “fundamentally disrespectful”, Lumsden ruled out standing in the Aberdeen South by-election moment after being re-elected as an MSP on May 8 – only to U-turn just days later.
New rules banning “double jobbing” mean he will have to resign from Holyrood just six weeks after being elected, should he win.
“I would love to be a Ring doorbell camera at some of the doors that he goes to to see just how that is going down,” Thomson said. “It’s raised quite a few eyebrows around here.
“It’s surprised a lot of people that the Conservatives felt they needed to raid the depleted ranks of the Holyrood group to find a suitable candidate rather than promoting any fresh talent that they might have.”
The Reform UK candidate, Jo Hart, has her own controversies to tangle with, including suggesting that Hollywood actors are part of a “satanic worshipping” conspiracy to “manipulate and program” people, that 5G networks cause health harms, and calling royal Jubilee celebrations a “piss take” for brainwashed people.
“Let's just say it's a surprising set of views for somebody who wants to have a position of genuine responsibility,” Thomson said. “I think it's a symptom of how Reform are struggling to move from being hyper online to actually dealing with real people in real communities.”
But the SNP candidate – who has lived in Aberdeen South for four years despite an erroneous Wikipedia entry saying he lives in Ellon – said that the most important thing for people in the area was energy policy and the city’s economy.
“It’s coming up in pretty much every conversation,” he said. “Many people who live in Aberdeen South either work directly in the oil and gas industry or the energy sector, or their job is dependent on it, or they know somebody or have a family member who works in it.
“While people understand that our future lies in renewables and the successful transition to that, they know that in the meantime, we need to have a bridge to that future.”
The SNP have faced criticism – especially in the north east – for their position on oil and gas, but Thomson said that “most people, particularly those in the industry, get that there has to be a transition and I think they are appreciating that the SNP are back where they need to be” on energy policy.
The Aberdeen South vote has been characterised as an “energy by-election”, a label Thomson said he could understand, and he argued that all of the Westminster parties have weaknesses in the area.
“Thanks to the disastrous taxation policy of the Conservatives – the energy profit levy, which has created the cliff edge in the North Sea that Ed Miliband and the Labour Government in London are now determined to push us over – thanks to the continued imposition of that inflexible tax, we're killing investment in the North Sea,” he said.
“Reform, like the other UK Westminster parties, simply want to strip out every pound that they can from the North Sea without sending a penny back – and without either making or enabling the requisite investment in the energy transition that we need.”
He went on: “That gets to the fundamentals of this, for any UK government of any political colour, all they're interested in is stripping out every pound that they possibly can in tax from the North Sea, while they barely send pennies back to the north east of Scotland to help us diversify our economic base.
“No Scottish government would behave in that manner, and that's why it's important that energy policy is fully under the control of Scottish people through a fully independent sovereign Scottish parliament.”
Voters will go to the polls in Aberdeen South, Arbroath and Broughty Ferry, and Makerfield in England, on June 18 to elect three new MPs.
