If a Rottweiler tried to maul him he’d put it down as a maybe...
As signs of the changing times go, it’s a close-run thing in Alloa between the defending candidate’s stall sharing pavement space with a syrian minimart and that candidate being Conservative.
Luke Graham was the first Tory to win Ochil and south Perthshire or its predecessors since Unionist MP James Wellwood Johnston, who held the area for a single term in the 1930s.
The 34-year-old is hoping Ochil will break the habit of generations and keep him in a job.
Graham’s case for re-election hinges on three claims: the Tories will get Brexit done, they won’t allow Nicola sturgeon another referendum, and he has brought UK Government investment to the constituency.
Last saturday, the candidate and a gaggle of volunteers headed off to canvass Alloa Park, a new-ish estate that Graham lost in 2017. ‘I want to take you somewhere where opinion is mixed,’ he says, and the early responses confirm. After a run of anti-Tory households, he turns and smiles: ‘You’re a jinx.’
While stuffing a leaflet through a letterbox, Graham almost falls victim to that perennial peril of the election campaigner – an angry dog. Luckily, he yanks his hand back out just in time. He is joined by Alexander stewart, MsP for Mid scotland and Fife and one of those happy warriors for whom the Tories are always on the up. If a Rottweiler tried to maul him on the doorstep, he’d put it down as a ‘maybe’.
Graham’s temperament is largely unsuited to combative politics and yet all the more appealing for it.
His main rival in this contest is Nicola sturgeon’s pro-independence candidate John Nicolson.
In 2015, Nicolson sought sNP selection for North Ayrshire and Arran; Midlothian; Linlithgow and East Falkirk; and West Dunbartonshire. He was finally successful in East Dunbartonshire and took the seat from Jo swinson in the General Election, only for her to take it back in 2017.
After his electoral tour of all the other shires, is it time for Ochil and south Perthshire to take one for the team?
GRAHAM, who lives in the constituency, says: ‘I’d rather talk about what we’re trying to do to be positive for Ochil and south Perthshire. It will be for John Nicolson to explain to our constituency why we’re good enough now as his sixth choice for a parliamentary seat.’
His decision to take the high road is admirable given the personal attacks he has come in for. During the selection process, a local sNP councillor pledged to ‘send him homeward’.
Graham lives in Auchterarder but his mother is English. In March, unknown individuals turned up at his constituency office and barracked one of his aides while she worked late, shouting that ‘in an independent scotland all of you will be hanging’. Graham’s measured style of politics may serve him well, since locals seem far from enamoured by flash and fury.
steven Kidd, whom we catch heading out for some morning exercise, voted No in 2014 and Remain in 2016. He says: ‘There’s only really two options here. The sNP wants one thing, at the end of the day, and I don’t want that. But the Tories want one thing too, Brexit, and I don’t want that either. Where do you go?’
It is up to Graham and his team to convince voters like Mr Kidd if they don’t want the seat to fall back into sNP hands.
Graham says: ‘The main message for me, nationally, is sort Brexit. There is a deal on the table with the EU, so I want to get that through and move forward. I don’t want another independence referendum. Those are the two big national messages.
‘Locally, it’s continuing with local action.
‘I’ve held over 300 surgeries since I was elected, helped over 8,000 constituents and got £8million for Clackmannanshire from the UK Government.’
With three weeks to go, he will have to weather a lot more negativity to be in with a chance of bringing positive politics back to the Commons.