New leader’s leafy suburban west of Scotland constituency a key SNP target

Jo Swinson has already claimed victory in one major political battle this year by becoming the UK leader of the Liberal Democrats.

But the Scot faces the prospect of another stern test if voters are asked in the coming months to go back to the polls for a third general election in four years.

Her East Dunbartonshire seat, a leafy suburban area outwith the Glasgow municipal boundaries that includes the affluent commuter towns of Bearsden and Milngavie, is one of the SNP’S key targets at any future Westminster poll.

Swinson first won the

redrawn constituency in 2005 and comfortably retained it in 2010.

But five years later she was one of several high-profile victims of the SNP surge that saw the Nationalists claim 56 of 59 seats north of the Border. Two years later Swinson was back, winning her old seat with an impressive 5,339 majority on a 7 per cent swing from the SNP.

When asked by The Scotsman in 2017 as to why she had decided to stand again, she said: “I couldn’t not do it.

“Particularly in the aftermath of Brexit and having real concerns about the direction of the country, and then Nicola Sturgeon’s comments about indyref2. As someone who cares about those issues, I had to do what I could.”

Swinson is an East Dunbartonshire local. She was educated at Douglas Academy, a nondenominational state school in Milngavie, consistently ranked as among the best in the country.

She went on to graduate from the London School of Economics with a first class degree in management, by which time she was already an active member of the Lib Dems.

Swinson was elected at the 2005 general election, when she defeated Labour’s John Lyons to become the firstever MP born in the 1980s.