WESTMINSTER WANNABES
Two sport nose rings, one uses cannabis… meet some colourful Commons hopefuls
IN an election campaign that has focused as much on the personal as the political, you could be forgiven for thinking you know too much about certain politicians running for re-election. But not everybody is a household name. Here, EMMA COWING looks at some of the more unusual Scottish candidates hoping for your vote in Thursday’s General Election.
EMILY SANTOS
WHO? Nurse and Ukip candidate for Gordon.
WHAT’S HER EXPERIENCE? Not to be confused with professional fitness bikini model Emily Santos, this Miss Santos is a 26-year- old nurse from Inverurie who works in a community hospital outside Aberdeen.
Her mother is Caroline Santos, a prominent member of Ukip who is standing in Argyll and Bute.
Ukip’s Scottish MEP David Coburn said of her: ‘ Emily is not claiming to be a political expert, but she does know the health service and will go to town with that.’ Despite all this enthusiasm, however, she failed to turn up for the first Gordon hustings in March, with her mother later explaining she had just worked a 12-hour shift at the hospital.
STANDOUT MOMENT: An awkward photocall with Scotland’s other Ukip candidates, in which she resembled a frightened fawn who’d accidentally turned up at a deer stalker’s night out.
KEY QUOTE: ‘The NHS is something I am passionate about and know a lot of. That is my ticket, if you like.’
CHANCES OF WINNING? About the same as professional fitness bikini model Emily Santos.
TAYLOR MUIR
WHO? Part-time Sky sales adviser and Scottish Tory candidate for Rutherglen and Hamilton West.
WHAT’S HIS EXPERIENCE? He’s a local boy made good, having grown up in Rutherglen. He’s in his second year as a law student at Strathclyde University. Whether knowing his way around Rutherglen Shopping Centre qualifies him to a seat i n Westminster, however, is debatable.
STANDOUT MOMENT: A lovely photoshoot with Scottish Conservatives’ leader Ruth Davidson in which, with his toothy grin and shock of dark hair, he looked alarmingly like her son.
KEY QUOTE: ‘This election is about the path our country should take for the next generation to come.’
CHANCES OF WINNING? In a resolutely working- class area slim to nil, but probably one to watch.
MHAIRI BLACK
WHO? A 20-year- old student and SNP candidate for Paisley and Renfrewshire South.
WHAT’S HER EXPERIENCE? A vocal Yes campaigner and political ‘geek’, she is one of the youngest parliamentary candidates yet. The day after she was selected her mother had to take her shopping for some smart clothes. She once said Smirnoff Ice was ‘the drink of the Gods’.
STANDOUT MOMENT: Memorable speech in Glasgow last October in which she declared that it took ‘every fibre of my being not to put the nut’ into a group of Labour councillors on the morning the country voted No.
KEY QUOTE: ‘It’s about making a
noise.’
CHANCES OF WINNING? Despite running against Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander, alarmingly high.
MEGHAN GALLACHER
WHO? A 22-year-old graduate and the Scottish Conservatives’ candidate for Motherwell and Wishaw.
WHAT’S HER EXPERIENCE? Miss Gallacher has a degree in politics from the University of the West of Scotland. She also has a nose stud. During last year’s referendum she did some canvassing for Better Together and once compered a speech by Lord McConnell. She says she would like to be the Tory party’s next female Prime Minister.
STANDOUT MOMENT: Posing for a photoshoot with face masks of David Cameron and Boris Johnson, and saying she’d like to go on a date with the Mayor of London.
‘I’d definitely opt for something fun, like ice skating so we could skate round while I ask exactly what shampoo he uses for such perfect hair,’ she revealed.
KEY QUOTE: ‘I am still a normal girl who enjoys socialising and going out. And at some point during the night, there is always a tipsy debate or two about politics.’
CHANCES OF WINNING? In a staunchly Labour constituency where the wounds ds of the closure of steel pla plant Ravenscraig still run deep, a date with Boris sounds more likely.
YVONNE MACLEAN
WHO? Mother of one and Cannabis Is Safer Than Alcohol Party candidate for Rutherglen and Hamilton West.
WHAT’S HER EXPERIENCE? She smokes cannabis. While most political parties would view this as a negative, it would be appear to be a big plus point for the 41- year- old, who is standing for a party whose sole purpose is to change Britain’s drug laws. She claims that she smokes cannabis to treat depression and wants to see the drug legalised for medicinal purposes.
STANDOUT MOMENT: She lost her brother Garry to suicide in 2012 and claimed the ‘right strain’ of cannabis ‘definitely would have helped him’. Garry’s widow Denise disputes this, saying he was very anti-drugs. It all sounds more like an uncomfortable family argument rather than a general election campaign. KEY QUOTE: ‘I am breaking the law.’
CHANCES OF WINNING? She’d have to
smoke a lot ot of cannabis to think she’s in with a chance. Oh, wait…
TOMMY SHEPPARD
WHO? Director of the Stand Comedy Club and SNP candidate for Edinburgh East.
WHAT’S HIS EXPERIENCE? Well, he’s spent the past 20 years dealing with comedians, so Westminster ought to be a breeze. Curiously, however, for an SNP candidate, he is a veteran of the Labour party and has been both a campaigner and for eight years a Labour councillor in Hackney, London. Indeed, so new is he to the SNP, he only joined the party after the referendum.
STANDOUT MOMENT: He hosted a ‘lunch’ with Salmond, at which the former leader signed copies of his autobiography. Tickets were a hefty £15 each.
KEY QUOTE: ‘A lot of Labour people like myself have come over to the party.’
CHANCES OF WINNING? Edinburgh East is the Nationalists’ most winnable seat in the capital – so hilariously high.
BRADEN DAVY
WHO? Former assistant manager of McDonald’s in Aberdeen, and Labour candidate for Gordon.
WHAT’S HIS EXPERIENCE? Despite a promising career in the fast food industry the 22-year-old traded in the golden arches for Westminster, where he spent time as parliamentary assistant to MP Anne Begg.
Impressive, although not quite the political heavyweight you’d expect for such a seat. Perhaps this has something to do with his SNP opponent, one Alex Salmond.
STANDOUT MOMENT: Debating against Salmond in the hustings. The former First Minister kept calling him Brandon.
KEY QUOTE: ‘I’m proud I worked in McDonald’s, I’ ve already got experience Alex Salmond doesn’t.’
CHANCES OF WINNING? Salmond isn’t the only one who keeps getting his name wrong. Slim to none.
LEWIS CAMPBELL
WHO? An 18-year- old s t udent and Green Party candidatedate for Dunfermline and West Fife.
WHAT’S HIS EXPERIENCE? He went canvassing for his father at the age of nine when his father stood as a Lib Dem candidate.
He argues that youth makes him an ideal MP as young people have, since the referendum in Scotland, become more engaged in politics. And for those worrying about his age, fear not: by the day of the election, he will be a hefty 19 years old and one day.
STANDOUT MOMENT: Despite emailing the Greens to tell them he was interested in standing he never heard back. Fortunately, he turned up on the day of the selection meeting and got voted in anyway.
‘I’d just finished my uni exams for the semester that day, so I was in an optimistic mood,’ he revealed.
KEY QUOTE: ‘Not only are young people not typically lazy – as I know from being a young person – but they are not apathetic either. While it is true that young people are less likely to vote, they still care about political issues.’
CHANCES OF WINNING? Low. But he’s so young, he’ll be able to stand for seven more general elections before he turns 50.
ARTHUR MISTY THACKERAY
WHO? Chief of staff to Ukip MEP David Coburn and Ukip candidate for Glasgow East.
WHAT’S HIS EXPERIENCE? Works full-time for Ukip for the charming David Coburn, who so memorably referred to SNP politician Humza Yousaf as Abu Hamza.
Mr Thackeray has made a number of gaffes, including saying that Glasgow City Council stands for ‘gays, Catholics, Communists’. Former National Front chief Patrick Harrington once sent him an online Christmas card.
STANDOUT MOMENT: Insisting there is ‘ Islamist influence within the SNP and Labour’ in Glasgow and declaring in a social media posting that during the last election ‘I thought we were contesting a seat in Pakistan. Lol’.
KEY QUOTE: ‘Many in today’s society have become accustomed to sugar-coated language. But it goes without saying it is never my intention to cause needless offence.’
CHANCES OF WINNING? In a seat dominated by a battle between Labour’s ur’s Margaret Curran and the SNP’s Natalie McGarry, few will be voting for Misty.
ZARA KITSON
WHO? LGBT campaigner and Green candidate f or Glasgow North East.
WHAT’S HER EXPERIENCE? Years of passionate Yes campaigning. She says she works freelance ‘under the banner of dream graft’, whatever that may be.
Also co-founder of something called So Say Scotland, whose logo reads ‘Scotland loves democracy xx’. She also has a fetching nose ring.
STANDOUT MOMENT: Following the No vote in the referendum she wrote a long, emotive essay entitled ‘my journey to gratitude’ in which she talked of how, in the days after the vote, she was able to ‘connect with my own grief, and the stirrings of disappointment and bewilderment of a hoodwinked nation’.
KEY QUOTE: ‘Here’s to continuing to declare independence of mind.’
CHANCES OF WINNING? Despite all that grafting, little more than a dream.