BE A TEENAGE TORY

What it feels like to ...

MY first girlfriend was a Labour supporter and her mother was SNP. She would get angry because I’d sit for hours arguing with her mum, so she would leave the room. I think that’s healthy debate but she didn’t.

I’m hopefully going to stand next May as a council candidate for the Conservative Party in Glasgow. I hope to light a fire in the City Chambers, metaphorically speaking. Preferably I’d want to stand somewhere local so a lot of people know who I am and I know what kind of problems they face.

My mum and dad were Labour voters and had always voted Labour, I knew nothing else. Tony Blair was the prime minister and it was Labour, Labour, Labour.

I looked into it on the internet and a new Tory was born. I realised there was more out there than the Labour Party.

It was only when the European question came up I realised there was a difference between me and the Conservative Party. That issue was so important to me at the time that I joined Ukip. Do I regret that decision? Of course I do, but I have learned from that mistake. From Ukip I learned not to take everything a politician says as 100 per cent genuine, to not trust people who claim to be martyrs of the working class, which is what Nigel Farage did.

When I left Ukip I went on BBC Two’s Scotland 2016 to talk about it. The next morning in school, a deputy head teacher who didn’t like me much pulled me aside and asked if he could have a word. I thought, “I’m in trouble.” He then asked for my autograph. That sort of experience is surreal.

I hope the younger generations at the school I went to, Hillpark Secondary in Glasgow, will look at that and think, even at 18, that the sky’s the limit. You don’t have to be 40 to get on TV or be involved in politics. Be a Tory if you want – there are no restriction.

The majority of my mates at school didn’t care about politics. They were more interested in football, girls and passing exams. The ones who did care disagreed with me, but they were all willing to hear me out.

I go clubbing on Saturdays. I am a normal teenager. That’s the thing some people can’t understand, that you can be a Tory on one hand and a teenager on the other. Whether you’re Tory, Labour or whatever,

you’re out to have a good time, get drunk and have a laugh.

When I was leafleting for the No campaign in Neilston I was spat on and called “Tory scum”. The guy was six foot tall and looked to be in his mid-50s. He was clearly passionate about Scottish independence, but to go to the length of spitting on someone who was at that time 16 years old is frankly vulgar.

Where things are going right now, voters are giving the Scottish Conservatives a chance. I hope they give me a chance too, a young person just getting involved in politics.

PHOTOGRAPH: COLIN MEARNS