Election / Immigration arguments and Scatsta ‘capitulation’ – candidates debate hot topics at BBC hustings
Reform candidate rebuked for referring to ‘them’ during debate on immigration
IF THERE is ever a quiet day in politics, then Tuesday was not it.
Hours after a flying visit from Reform UK’s Nigel Farage exposed the angry divide across the political spectrum, it was time for Shetland’s Scottish election hopefuls to be grilled once more at the latest hustings event.
Hosted by BBC Radio Shetland this time, and held at Mareel, it brought seven of the eight candidates together to set out their stall for voters undecided before May 7.
The Scottish Conservatives’ Douglas Barnett was the only absentee, with a sheepish Jamie Halcro Johnston taking his place. Even the lesser-spotted Reform candidate Vic Currie managed an appearance.
Led by the BBC’s John Johnston, the hustings followed a familiar pattern – election pitches, followed by questions from Johnston and then the audience.
Shetland News watched it all unfold, and has picked out the key moments following a tumultuous day on the campaign trail.
Immigration debate
It should probably come as no surprise that immigration elicited the angriest audience response after the protests just hours earlier.
Former library manager Karen Fraser put it to the candidates that there were 1.1 jobs for every person in Shetland, with major staffing vacancies across health and social care.
Put succinctly, she said Shetland has a “problem with immigrants not taking our jobs” – which brought the loudest round of applause of the night.
Asked what he would do about it, Currie earned a rebuke from compere Johnston for talking about national statistics. He was urged to respond from a Shetland perspective.
The Reform candidate said he would like people a “little closer to home” than migrants to fulfil these jobs. This resulted in both scattered applause, and some audible gasps.
He repeatedly referred to “them”, which led the SNP’s Hannah Mary Goodlad to angrily interrupt and say: “It’s not them, it’s we”, to more applause.
Currie said it was the policy of Reform UK to “accept any asylum seeker following the rules”, and he challenged the audience to find anything in the party’s manifesto which was “hostile to immigrants”.
The rest of the panel were unrepentant in their views. The Greens’ Alex Armitage, at the heart of the morning’s protests, said Farage supported the “demonisation of immigrants and migrants in the UK”.
Liberal Democrat’s Emma Macdonald was a “welcoming place to anyone and everyone that wants to come here”.
And Goodlad added that she was “more concerned about superyachts than I am about dinghies”.
Statkraft deal and council criticism
Goodlad stuck to a line she has followed at previous hustings’, about the perceived failure of Shetland Islands Council under Macdonald’s spell as political leader.
While it came up repeatedly, the biggest debate came during a discussion about the SIC’s record on large-scale energy projects.
The SNP candidate said that the council had “capitulated” on the sale of the former Scatsta airport to Statkraft, and “sold out for an absolute pittance”.
Macdonald strongly defended both her, and the SIC’s, record on energy negotiations.
She said the council would have been able to secure a better deal for the Scatsta site if the Scottish Government had set a higher level of minimum community benefit for companies to pay.
The government’s recent increase from £5,000 to £6,000 per MW was described by her as “really pitiful”.
There was no defence of the Scatsta deal from fellow councillor Armitage, however. He said they had “failed as a council” to leverage the best deal out of Statkraft.
But Macdonald said there had been very little interest in the Scatsta site after the airport closed in June 2020, and that the SIC had needed to make some income from it to run essential council services.
Shetland tariff and climate “nonsense”
Labour candidate John Erskine said his party was in the process of restructuring the energy market after questioning about a Shetland energy tariff.
Goodlad said she had been left stunned after the Labour government decided not to introduce zonal pricing, which could have brought this in.
Erskine said they had done this because it would have been “harder to decarbonise” the country in the long-term.
For Alliance to Liberate Scotland candidate Brian Nugent, climate change was “all nonsense” – a statement which appeared to stun some audience members.
Armitage fired back that it was “not nonsense”, which led Nugent to chastise the Green candidate for interrupting him.
Goodlad said her party would tell the UK Government on day one of an SNP majority at Holyrood that it wanted to take control of its own energy powers.
But Armitage said first minister John Swinney had “no plan” for what would happen when prime minister Sir Keir Starmer said no to that request.
Conservative list candidate Halcro Johnston found himself in the “unusual” position of agreeing with his Green counterpart, saying Swinney had been “taking back control for a long time”.
Scottish independence
Unsurprisingly the night turned to independence, with Swinney saying that a referendum could take place in 2028 if the SNP win a majority in Holyrood in May.
Goodlad said she felt the 2028 line was “overly ambitious”, and seemed to shy away from the question at first – saying this was “not a referendum election” and that the question was not on the ballot paper.
Pressed for her views on independence by Johnston, she said: “Of course I believe in independence, I’m in the SNP”.
Armitage and Nugent were also in favour, while Halcro Johnston, Currie, Erskine and independent candidate Peter Tait were not.
Macdonald said she had knocked on hundreds of doors, but that the issue of Scottish independence “hasn’t come up once”.
Armitage said it was likely the SNP party would only win a minority in Holyrood next month, and would look to the Greens again to form a pro-independence government.
Halcro Johnston said that would “terrify” anyone who remembered the last SNP-Green government, which ended in a bitter fallout.
Fixed links
Everyone was agreed that Shetland needs fixed links, such as tunnels, but the core issue of finance continues to provide a stumbling block.
Currie, who lives in Edinburgh currently, said there were £2 billion worth of trams running around the city but the Scottish Government could not find funding for fixed links.
He said the only thing lacking was the “political will”.
Goodlad said she would be “banging that drum every single day” if elected to Holyrood next month.
But Currie said it was naïve to think the SNP government would listen, adding that it governs for the whole country and every MSP would come with a list of demands.
He said it seems like the SNP is “holding Shetland for ransom”.
Blast off for election countdown
The event concluded with a light-hearted question from Johnston about what each candidate would bring into space with them – and which fellow candidate they would like to join them.
Erskine seemed to have won the popularity contest, being selected three times to accompany his fellow candidates into orbit.
For Erskine’s part, he selected Armitage to take with him – because he would fill the silence by talking constantly, he added in jest.
At the end of the night, Goodlad was seen introducing herself to Macdonald’s daughter and grandson in the middle of the floor.
On a day of division in Shetland, maybe that image of people crossing the political divide should be the one that endures.
The full 90 minute long hustings will be broadcast on BBC Radio Shetland at 6pm tonight (Wednesday).
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