Election / Greens best way to ‘counter’ Reform in regional vote, party claims
THE GREENS are claiming that backing them in the regional vote at May’s Scottish elections could reduce the chances of three Reform MSPs being elected to represent the Highlands and Islands.
Green Shetland constituency candidate Alex Armitage has also encouraged local folk to understand the regional voting system before polling day.
He said recent polling data for the Highlands and Islands suggests the Greens could end up with one regional MSP, as they currently have, with Reform potentially securing three.
Armitage said the data suggests the Tories could elect two regional MSPs, and Labour one.
But Armitage said the final MSP position is “expected to be a close three-way contest” between Reform, the Lib Dems and Green candidate Kristopher Leask.
Leask is an Orcadian councillor who is second on the Greens’ regional list for the Highlands and Islands seats behind current MSP Ariane Burgess.
When people vote in the Scottish Parliament elections – set to take place on 7 May – they have two choices to make.
One is for a candidate in their local constituency – in Shetland this role is currently held by the Lib Dems’ Beatrice Wishart, who is standing down.
The other is for a party in their particular region of Scotland, which in Shetland’s case is the Highlands and Islands.
The regional list uses a different voting system and aims to achieve proportional representation, with eight regions in Scotland.
The voting system used in the regional section aims to give parties who do not succeed in constituencies a better chance at election.
There are seven Highlands and Islands MSPs at the moment – Burgess, Emma Roddick (SNP), Douglas Ross, Jamie Halcro Johnston and Edward Mountain of the Conservatives in addition to Rhoda Grant from Labour.
In the last election in 2021 the Greens did not secure any MSPs in the constituencies across Scotland but due to the votes the party received it achieved a number of regional MSPs.
There are 56 regional MSPs and 73 constituency MSPs, meaning the regional list vote remains important.
Green list candidate Leask was in Shetland last weekend to help with campaigning, and he said there is a growing positivity in the party after their Gorton and Denton by-election win at the end of February.
“I think there’s a lot of optimism and hope in the country that we can actually start changing things,” he said.
“I was out canvassing the day after the by-election last week and I’ve never seen such a response whereby people were both engaged and interested in the big politics in the country, but equally hearing from folk who are so directly calling out how our economy and our country just isn’t working for them,” he said.
Leask, who chairs Orkney Islands Council’s enterprise and infrastructure committee, has previously worked with Community Energy Scotland about developing a national paper looking at community-owned energy projects.
“I think that just understanding the difficulties that communities in the islands and businesses in the islands face is really beneficial, and I think it stands me in good stead to engage even further on top of what I already do with stakeholders in Shetland,” he said.
Armitage said this has given him Leask a “deep understanding of the energy system and the injustices inherent within it”, adding that he is the “perfect antidote to the divisive, Trumpian politics of Reform UK”.
He said he was “deeply disturbed” that polling data suggests that Reform could stand to have three Highlands and Islands MSPs.
“After many conversations with folk on the doorstep in this campaign, I believe that the vast majority of folk in Shetland would also be horrified at this prospect,” he said.
“Reform have pledged to replace the NHS with an American style insurance-based healthcare system; they have also pledged to create a UK version of ICE, which has been terrorising immigrant communities and conducting extrajudicial killings in the United States.
“We cannot let Donald Trump’s vulgar politics enter Scotland via the regional list vote. Voting Green is the most effective way to counter the far-right threat of Reform UK.”
Reform UK has yet to announce any candidates for Scottish parliamentary elections apart from Inverclyde where the party’s Scottish leader Malcolm Offord will stand.
A note on the party’s website says candidates across Scotland will be announced on 19 March.
Opinion polls suggest Reform UK share of the vote in Shetland could be in the region of 16 per cent.
The Conservatives, meanwhile, have published their regional list with no indication who might be standing in Shetland as their constituency candidate.
Other candidates publicly confirmed so far for the Shetland constituency are in alphabetical order: John Erskine (Labour), Hannah Mary Goodlad (SNP), Emma Macdonald (Liberal Democrats), Brian Nugent (Alliance to Liberate Scotland).
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