Candidates and Constituency Assessments

'What a disgrace. What an insult to our Armed Services which Scots have served in for generations at a time when they are engaged in the war against terrorism.'
David McLetchie MSP, 9 th October 2001, on suggestions that the Union flag at Edinburgh Castle be replaced with the saltire.

Edinburgh Pentlands (Lothians Region)

	Dr Ian McKee		Iain Gray MSP
	David McLetchie MSP		Dr Simon Clark
	Frank O'Donnell

There were major boundary changes in Edinburgh Pentlands in 1983 and the seat migrated slightly from Edinburgh and up the Pentland hills themselves. 9,000 voters were transferred to Edinburgh West, 5,000 to South and 2,000 to Central, while Pentlands gained 9,000 voters from Midlothian and 5,500 from Edinburgh South. The boundary changes in 1997 were very minor and had almost no effect on the 1992 notional result.

The Westminster seat of Edinburgh Pentlands was held by the Conservatives from 1950 until 1997. It was not the safe Conservative seat that it might have appeared to be apart from the early years from 1950 until 1964 when it was held by Lord John Hope. Lord John obtained a majority of 5,195 over Labour in 1950 and increased that at each election to 7,399 in 1951, 7,485 in 1955 and 8,792 in 1959. In that year the Labour candidate was John P. Mackintosh became MP for Berwick & East Lothian in 1966.

Lord John Hope retired in 1964 and it looked as if Tory hopes of holding Edinburgh Pentlands had disappeared with him. In 1964 the Liberals contested the seat for the first time since 195ˆ and their 13.4 % of the vote came directly from the Conservatives. The new Tory MP, Norman Wylie was elected with a majority of just 2,387 over Labour with the Conservative vote down by 14.3 % to 46.0 % while the Labour vote was up by 0.9 % to 40.6 %.

A Tory disaster in Pentlands was averted by just 44 votes in 1966 as Norman Wylie took 19,176 votes (44.94 %) compared to 19,132 (44.84 %) for Labour's W. Wallace. The Liberal candidate Dr D. Clark took 4,363 votes (10.2 %), almost 100 times Mr Wylie's majority.

The Tories could breath again in 1970 when there was a 3.3 % swing from Labour and Norman Wylie was elected with a vastly increased majority of 3,183. The Liberals took 8.6 %, and the SNP, contesting the seat for the first time, took 5.9 %.

Norman Wylie retired in February 1974 and he was replaced by Malcolm Rifkind QC who survived, often with less than 40% of the vote despite repeated predictions that he would be unseated. However, in 1997, Mr Rifkind finally went down as the Tory ship sank with all hands.

In February 1974, although the Tory vote decreased by 4.9 % to 41.2 %, the Labour vote fell even further by 8.6 % to 30.8 %, which allowed Malcolm Rifkind to be elected with a majority of 4,602, the largest since Lord John Hope in 1959. The Liberals increased their vote to 15.6 % and the SNP to 12.5 %.

Things looked less rosy for Malcolm Rifkind in October 1974 when the Labour vote increased by 0.1 % but the Tory vote fell by 7.3 % resulting in a Conservative majority of just 1,257, the second smallest since 1950. The Tories took just 33.9 % of the vote compared to Labour's 30.9 %. The Labour candidate was George Foulkes an Edinburgh Cllr, who went on to win South Ayrshire from Jim Sillars in 1970 and who is currently Deputy Secretary of State for Scotland. Just 2,637 votes behind Labour was the Scottish National Party's J. Hutchison making Pentlands one of the countries tightest three way marginals. The SNP vote had doubled to 24.6 % while the Liberals fell back to 10.6 %.

In 1979 the Tory vote was up by 5.4 % and the Labour vote by 5.7 % giving Malcolm Rifkind a slightly reduced majority of 1,198. Pentlands had become once more a two horse race with the Liberals on 13.2 % and the SNP down to 11.0 %.

The boundary changes in 1983 and the emergence of the Alliance, who stole second place from Labour, allowed Malcolm Rifkind to increase his majority to a much more healthy 4,309 over the SDP's Keith Smith. The Tories took 39.2 %, the SDP 29.3 %, Labour 23.9 % and the SNP 6.1 %. The Labour candidate was regional Cllr Eric Milligan who is currently Lord Provost of Edinburgh. The SNP candidate was Professor Neil MacCormick, son of John MacCormick and brother of Ian MacCormick the SNP MP for Argyll. He is currently an SNP Euro MP.

In 1987 Mr Rifkind's majority dropped slightly to 3,745 with Labour's Cllr Mark Lazarowicz pushing the SDP's Keith Smith into third place. The Tories took 38.3 %, Labour 30.0 %, the SDP 24.5 % and the SNP's Neil MacCormick 7.2 %.

In 1992, the Alliance vote collapsed, and while Labour's vote increased by 1.1 %, the Tory vote went up by 2.4 % giving Malcolm Rifkind a 4,290 majority over Cllr Lazarowicz. The SNP's Kathleen Caskie more than doubled their vote to 15.5 % while the Liberal Democrats fell back to 12.6 %.

In 1997, Sir Malcolm Rifkind took 32.4 % of the vote, down from a notional 40.2 % in 1992. Rifkind saw Edinburgh Pentlands won by Labour's Linda Clark QC with a 4,862 majority and 43.0 % of the vote, up from a notional 31.2 % in 1992. The SNP's Stewart Gibb took 134.0 % and Jennifer Dawes took 10.0 % for the Lib Dems. In fifth place was Malcolm McDonald for the Referendum Party, followed by a certain Robin Harper, who would become an MSP two years later, with 0.5 % of the Greens

The 1997 general election was even worse for the Tories the 1832 election when they were routed for their opposition to the Reform Act. Before 1997, only one Cabinet Minister had lost his seat in Scotland - Gordon Campbell, the Tory Secretary of State lost Moray & Nairn to Winnie Ewing in February 1974. In 1997, no less than three Cabinet Ministers lost their seats - Secretary of State for Scotland Michael Forsyth in Stirling, President of the Board of Trade Ian Lang in Galloway & Upper Nithsdale, and Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind in Edinburgh Pentlands.

When John Major resigned as Tory leader their 1997 rout had claimed so many cabinet ministers that there practically no leadership candidates left. Only one of these, Kenneth Clarke, looked at all credible as a future Prime Minister and indeed, he had the support of the majority of Scottish Tory associations. However, the English Tories, ever suicidal, appeared to believe that Labour had won the election because of their relatively youthful leader, Tony Blair. The Conservatives decided that they would follow this path and chose an even younger leader. Unfortunately for them, their new leader William Hague turned out to be a gormless nonentity straight out of Monty Python's Upper Class Twit mould and made John Major look like a decisive, dynamic and firm leader.

Unlike Ian Lang (now Lord Lang of Monkton) and Michael Forsyth (now Lord Forsyth of Drumlean) Mr Rifkind did not slunk off to the traditional asylum for clapped out Tory rejects, the Palace of Ignorance that is the House of Lords. Malcolm Rifkind is a fighter and despite his claims to the contrary had his eyes set upon becoming the next Tory Prime Minister. He was a supporter of devolution in 1979, but more recently he has supported a pro-Union message, although perhaps not as strongly as the arch-Unionist and Thatcherite Scottish Secretary Michael Forsyth would have liked. Malcolm Rifkind was a Scottish Office Minister from 1979-1982 and was at the Foreign Office from 1982 until 1986. The Westland Helicopter Crisis and the resignation of Michael Heseltine gave him his big chance. George Younger was shifted to Defence and Michael Forsyth replaced Younger as Secretary of State for Scotland. Like George Younger before him, Rifkind moved to UK ministries - from 1990 to 1992 he was Transport Secretary followed by three years as Defence Secretary. Before the general election, Mr Rifkind was Foreign Secretary and was tipped as a future leader of the Conservative party. Unfortunately for him, and for the Tory party, he did not retain his seat at the general election. Newly knighted, he became President of the Scottish Conservatives. In 2001 Rifkind attempted to win back the seat which he had represented from October 1974 and 1997.

On paper, this seat was the Tory's seventh target, but in fact, after Ayr, where they won the Scottish seat in a parliamentary by-election, Edinburgh Pentlands seemed to be the constituency which they were most likely to win in Scotland. The Labour MP for Edinburgh Pentlands was Dr Lynda Clark QC, the Advocate General for Scotland. Although a nice enough woman, and highly qualified, like many of Labour's 1997 intake, she had failed to make her mark on Westminster and was not seen to be a particularly good constituency MP. The Tories had high hopes of seeing Sir Malcolm returned to Westminster.

On the 7 th of June 2001, while there was a swing of 3.1 % from Labour to the Tories, Linda Clark was returned to Westminster with her majority over Sir Malcolm Rifkind reduced from 4,862 to 1,742. The result was the biggest disappointment to the Tories in Scotland, and having failed to meet his target of 200 seats, William Hague resigned as Tory leader. He was replaced by an even more anonymous and feeble candidate in Ian Duncan Smith, the Leader Who Never Was.

Back in May 1998, a poll in the Scotsman of May 1998 suggested that Sir Malcolm Rifkind was by far the favourite amongst all voters ,and especially Tories.

Who people would like as leader of the Scottish Conservative Party

Tory	% of people questioned	% of Conservative voters
Sir Malcolm Rifkind	34 %	49 %
Sir Michael Forsyth	15 %	20 %
Michael Kerr, Earl of Ancram	5 %	9 %
Struan Stevenson	5 %	5 %
Raymond Robertson	3 %	2 %
David McLetchie	1 %	1 %
Don't know/Not sure	37 %	14 %

In our profile for 1999 we commented:

Unfortunately for the Tories, none of their big names wished to stand for Scottish leader. The leadership appeared to be about to fall to ex-President David McLetchie by default. Then Phil Gallie posed his candidature and the Tories opponents started to look less smug. Phil Gallie was a down to earth working class Tory who held George Younger's Ayr seat against all the odds in the 1992 election. He was the obvious man to pull the Scottish Tories back on to their feet. Unsurprisingly, therefore the Tories chose as their leader one of the old bufties who had dragged them down to electoral defeat after defeat - David McLetchie, better known to voters as 'who? Never heard of him!' or 'old McWhatshisname?' One of the most forgettable people in Scottish Politics, David McWhatshisname, was the favoured choice of only 1 % of Scots Tories and 1% of the public as Conservative leader. He has proved to be such an embarrassment that the Conservatives were obliged to give him a free ticket to the top of the Lothians list in the knowledge that he would otherwise probably end up near the bottom.

On the 10 th of April, David McWhatshisname made a typically embarrassing gaffe when he signed a petition to re-open the accident and emergency unit at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh. Good for him, you might think, but the unit had been closed by none other than the Tories. Even more embarrassing for McWhatshisname was the fact that he was accompanied by none other than the former Scottish Health Minister and Edinburgh West MP, Lord James Douglas Hamilton who now sports the natty little title of Lord Selkirk of Douglas. Sources report that the noble Lord Duggie was 'not amused'.

Since the general election, the Tories have appeared totally confused, with the Scots Tories issuing claims that they wholeheartedly support devolution while their London leadership and MPs at Westminster condemn it as a threat to the Union. McWhatshisname's candidature reveals just how bad the party list system is. He is unlikely to do well in Pentlands, however although neither the Scottish Tories nor the Scots as a whole really want this man as an MP his placing at the top of the Lothians list almost guarantees him a seat. Mr McWhatshisname is one of the best possible adverts for a true PR system where the public gets to chose their candidates from a party list. However every cloud has a silver lining. With leaders like Hague and McWhatshisname, Scotland is unlikely to suffer under a Tory government ever again. In the long run, voters will probably decide that there is no need for a Scottish Tory party when Tony Blair and London Labour is around to pursue Thatcherite policies with more vigour than John Major ever did.

The Tory choice of a damp squib in Pentlands suggests that they have given up hope of ever regaining this seat, which looks most likely to fall to Labour's Iain Gray by default.

In 1999, Iain Gray became MSP for Edinburgh Pentlands with a 2,885 majority over David McLetchie. The Labour vote was down 6.8 % to 36.2 % with the Tory vote slipping by 3.5 % to 28.9 %, the lowest ever in Pentlands. Meanwhile, the SNP's Stewart Gibb, who contested Pentlands at the 1997 general election, increased the SNP vote by 9.1 % to 22.2 % with the Lib Dems up 2.7 % to 12.7 %.

Iain Gray went on to become Deputy Minister for Community Care in Donald Dewar's administration and Deputy Justice Minister in Team McLeish. Iain Gray was one of the few Ministers from Henry McLeish's government who was promoted by Jack McConnell and he became Minister for Social Justice in November 2001. When Wendy Alexander, the 'Minister for Everything' resigned in May 2002, it was Iain Gray who inherited her portfolio as Minister for Enterprise, Transport & Lifelong Learning.

David McLetchie was elected to the Scottish Parliament as the second Lothians MSP due to his placing at the top of the Tory regional lists. To the surprise of many, especially this writer, David McLetchie has proved to be a valued member of the Scottish parliament, along with his deputy Annabelle Goldie, taking every opportunity to expose the Labour and Liberal Democrat administration with pawky humour. McLetchie is undoubtedly one of the few MSPs who has taken to the Scottish Parliament like a fish to water.

Unfortunately McLetchie has somewhat blotted his copy book of late. His proposals to reduce the numbers of MSPs in the parliament might strike a cord with some disillusioned voters, they would make the parliament unworkable and hark back to the dark days when the minority Tory administration refused to allow the Scots their own parliament. If even Wendy Alexander resigned as she was unable to cope with the workload of her department, it seems unlikely that many Tory MSPs would be able to cope with twice the workload that the current Scottish Ministers have.

McLetchie and his party have also deeply shocked many people by their support of Tony Blair's illegal decision to invade Iraq without a mandate from the United Nations. Not only David McLetchie, but his deputy Annabel Goldie, Bill Aitken, David Davidson, Lord Selkirk of Douglas, Alex Fergusson, Murdo Fraser, Phil Gallie, Keith Harding, Jamie McGrigor, Lyndsay McIntosh, Brian Monteith, David Mundell, Mary Scanlon, John Scott, Ben Wallace and John Young, and even deputy Presiding Officer, Murray Tosh voted for the invasion. The war was supposed to be justified by the fact that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction but as yet none have been found. One person suggested that those MPs and MSPs who had backed Tony Blair should be sent out to Iraq to help in the hospitals there and see at first hand the misery and suffering that their decisions had inflicted on innocent women and children.

David McLetchie presided over the Scottish Tories during the 1997 election when they lost all their seats in Scotland. Since then he has attempted to reconstruct the party as a serious electoral force, building on their 18 list MSPs, their by-election win in Ayr in 2000, and their regain of the Westminster seat of Galloway & Upper Nithsdale in 2001. However, he has been hampered by consistently poor poll results which have at times fallen into single figures. McLetchie will be consoled by the fact that the Tories generally tend to do better at real elections than their opinion poll ratings might suggest. The Tory election launch was also effectively sabotaged when two of their MSPs, Keith Harding and Lyndsay McIntosh defected to the Scottish Peoples Alliance after the end of the current parliament. Just how damaging this will be to the Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party remains to be seen.

Iain Gray was born in Edinburgh in 1957 and educated at Inverness Royal Academy and George Watsons in Edinburgh. One of few parliamentarians with a grounding in science, Iain Gray graduated with a BSc in physics from Edinburgh University and then trained as a teacher at Moray House. He taught history and match from 1976 until 1986 before working for Oxfam. Having replaced Wendy Alexander as 'Minister for Everything' Gray is seen to be one of Jack McConnell's most trusted collaborators.

David McLetchie was born in Edinburgh in 1952 and educated at George Heriot's. He graduated with an LLB from Edinburgh University and has worked as a solicitor since 1974, still continuing to work in the firm in which he is a partner after his election in 1999. The Scottish parliament was not McLetchie's first electoral contest as he had stood against Robin Cook in Edinburgh Central twenty years before in 1979, coming second with 7,530 votes, compared to 12,191 for Robin Cook. McLetchie was President of the Scottish Conservatives from 1994 until 1997 and was elected leader of the Scottish Tories in 1998.

The Scottish National Party have selected Dr Ian McKee, who in common with several of the SNP's candidates was born in England. Educated at Fettes College (luckily, some years before Tony Blair) Edinburgh University he works the Wester Hailes Health Centre. Dr McKee was previously an RAF medical officer and is Scottish Advisor to the British Pharmaceutical Industry Association and a member of the British Medical Association. Ian McKee joined the SNP as recently as 1998 and is a member of the SNP Social Welfare Advisory Forum. Dr McKee contested Edinburgh Central in 1999 and at the 2001 Westminster election. In 1999 he increased the SNP vote in Central by 9.9 % to take second place with 25.7 %.

The Lib Dem candidate is Dr Simon Clark, while the SSP have selected Frank O'Donnell. Surprisingly, the Scottish Peoples Alliance have not put up a candidate against David McLetchie in Edinburgh Pentlands.

Assessment:

Rank on Conservative hit list: 5
Swing required for Conservative gain: 3.65 % from Labour to Conservative

Rank on Scottish National Party hit list: 24
Swing required for Scottish National Party gain: 7.04 % from Labour to Scottish National Party

6 th May 1999 Holyrood Election

Party	Candidate	Votes	%	% change
Labour	Iain Gray	14,343	36.22 %	- 6.79 %
Conservative	David McLetchie	11,458	28.93 %	- 3.45 %
Scottish National Party	Stewart Gibb	8,770	22.15 %	+ 9.14 %
Liberal Democrat	Ian Gibson	5,029	12.70 %	+ 2.70 %
Lab win	Lab majority	2,885	7.29 %	- 3.34 %

6 th May 1999 Holyrood Election - Regional list vote result

Party	Votes	%
Labour	10,459	26.31 %
Conservative & Unionist Party	10,111	25.52 %
Scottish National Party	8,894	22.44 %
Liberal Democrats	5,691	14.36 %
Scottish Green Party	2,396	6.05 %
Socialist Labour Party	952	2.40 %
Scottish Socialist Party	410	1.03 %
ProLife Alliance	98	0.25 %
Natural Law Party	53	0.13 %
Others: Liberal Party Witchery Tour Party Civil Rights Movement Braveheart Socialist Party of Great Britain Independent Voice for Scottish Parliament Independent Independent Anti-Corruption, Mobile Home Scandal, Roads (No breakdown available)	595	1.50 %
Lab maj	315	0.79 %

1 st May 1997 Westminster Election