Candidates and Constituency Assessments

' In an internal memo that has been passed to The Herald, he (Glasgow MSP Robert Brown) says of the proposals for student loan and graduate endowment repayments: 'I think this is rather clumsy and distinctly unsatisfactory to have different levels in Scotland and in England. However, I think it will do the trick for us.' Robbie Dinwoodie in the Herald 30 th March 2001.

Edinburgh West (Lothians Region)

	Alyn Smith		Carol Fox
	Lord Selkirk of Douglas MSP		Margaret Smith MSP
	Pat Smith		Bruce Skivington

Edinburgh West faced major boundary changes in 1983 when one of the city's seven seats was abolished. West exchanged the Labour West Pilton/Muirhouse area for Labour Moat-Stenhouse. This gave the new seat 69% of voters from the old West, 15% from Pentlands, 11% from North and 5% from Central. In the boundary changes for the 1997 election, the seat was increased considerably in area, expanding into West Lothian to incorporate Kirkliston from Livingston and South Queensferry from Linlithgow.

Edinburgh West includes Edinburgh's 'stockbroker belt' of Corstorphine, Barnton and Cramond and has been held by the Conservatives since 1931, albeit with excruciatingly small majorities in the past three elections when there were fierce battles with the Liberals.

Edinburgh West was held by Liberal W.G. Normand, who was Solicitor General for Scotland, until 1929, when he was beaten by Labour. Labour's hold on Edinburgh West was brief and in 1931 they were beaten by the Tories. By 1950, this was an extremely safe Conservative seat with. G.I.C Hutchison taking 60.0 % of the vote in a three way fight and obtaining a 12,601 majority over Labour.

In 1951 the Liberals did not contest the seat and Mr Hutchison took 66.0 % of the vote, and obtained a 14,625 majority over Labour. Turnout in that election was a record 83.1 %

In 1955 there was a further swing to the Tories of 1.1 % and only a reduction in the turnout to 75.7 % caused a decrease in the newly knighted Sir G.I.C. Hutchison's majority to 13,216 over Labour.

In 1959 Sir G. Hutchison retired and was replaced by Anthony Stoddart. The Liberals contested the seat for the first time, and as usual, most of their 13.0 % of the vote came directly from the Conservatives. Anthony Stoddart was took 56.5 % of the vote and obtained a majority of 11,932 over Labour.

At the 1964 election, there was a swing of 4.8 % to Labour and Anthony Stoddart's majority fell to 7,939, with the Tories taking 50.6 %, Labour 35.3 % and the Liberals 14.1 %.

In 1966 the nation-wide swing to Labour continued, and Anthony Stoddart found his majority down to 4,809 over Labour's Dick Douglas, who would represent Clackmannan & east Stirlingshire from 1970 to February 1974 and Dunfermline and then Dunfermline West from 1979 until 1992 as a Labour, Independent and then SNP MP.

In 1970, the Tories recovered slightly and Anthony Stoddart's majority increased to 7,341 over Labour's George Foulkes, who beat Jim Sillars in South Ayrshire in 1979 and is currently Deputy Secretary of State for Scotland. The Tories too 49.2 %, Labour 35.8 %, Donald Gorrie took 8.2 % for the Liberals and the SNP polled 6.8 %.

The election of February 1974 saw the Liberal and SNP votes increasing at the expense of the Tories and Labour. Mr Stoddart took 44.2 %, down 5.0 % increased his majority to 8,477 over Labour's W.J. Taylor who polled 24.4 %, down 11.4 % on 1970. In third place was Liberal Donald Gorrie with 21.5 %, up 13.3 % on 1970 with the SNP's Mrs C.M. Moore taking 9.9 %, up 3.1 %.

Mr Anthony Stoddart He decided not to seek re-election in the second contest in October 1974. He was replaced by an aristocratic former Edinburgh town councillor of the bluest possible blood - Lord James Douglas-Hamilton, second son of the Duke of Hamilton, Scotland's premier duke. Lord James was elected with a majority of 5,202, down from Mr Stoddart's 8,477 in February. The Tories took 38.2 %, down 6.1 % while Labour's W.J. Taylor took 25.2 %, up 0.8 %. The SNP's Mrs CM Moore more than doubled her vote, up 10.3 % to 20.2 %, with Liberal Donald Gorrie falling back to fourth place with 16.4 %, down by 5.1 % on February.

In 1979 Edinburgh West was the site of the Conservative's most convincing win in the capital city as Lord James was re-elected with a majority of 7,351 over Labour. The Tories took 45.4 %, Labour's Michael McGregor 28.2 %, Liberal Roz Callender polled 17.2 % with the SNP's Colin Bell taking 9.2 %.

Edinburgh West nearly caused a sensation in 1983 as the Liberal Derek King came within 498 votes of unseating Lord James, more than doubling the Liberal vote from 17.2% in 1979 to 37.1% in 1983 and pushing Labour's Alex Wood into third place. The Tory, Labour and SNP votes were 38.2 %, 20.4 % and 4.6 % respectively, the lowest that each of these parties had polled in the constituency.

The 1986 Regional council elections gave some cheer to both Labour and the Conservatives, showing the gap widening between the Tories and the Alliance. However, despite the general collapse of the Alliance vote elsewhere in Scotland, Derek King was again a surprisingly strong challenger to Lord James, who increased his majority to 1,234 - not enough to again call West a safe Conservative seat. The Tories were on 37.4 %, the Liberals 34.9 %, Labour on 22.2 % and the SNP on 5.6 %. The SNP candidate was Norman Irons, the District councillor for North-east Corstorphine since 1976, who later became Lord Provost of Edinburgh.

The 1990 Regional elections saw Labour pulling ahead of the Liberal Democrats in West and it was generally assumed that having failed twice and with their vote collapsing throughout Scotland, the Liberal challenge was over. In the 1992 General election, the Liberal candidate was Donald Gorrie, often outspoken Edinburgh Councillor for Corstorphine, who had fought this seat in 1970 and in February and October 1974. Nationally the Liberal Democrats were almost 12% down from the Alliance hey-day in 1983. However, in Edinburgh West, Donald Gorrie managed a 0.35 swing from the Tories and succeeded in reducing Lord James' majority to only 879. The Tories took 37.1 %, the Liberals 35.3 %, Labour 18.0 % and the SNP's Graham Sutherland polled 8.4 %. Also standing were the Greens, the BNP and an old style Liberal, protesting at the merger with the SDP. However, they only took 639 votes between them, with the Liberal taking 272 and therefore did not affect the result.

In 1997, the boundary changes were in the Conservatives favour and gave Lord James a notional majority of 4,291 - the likes of which he had not seen since 1979. Edinburgh West was an extremely difficult seat to predict due to the addition of the Queensferry and Kirkliston areas - predominantly Scottish National Party/Labour areas added to a predominantly Conservative/Liberal Democrat seat. In the end, along with the rest of Britain, Edinburgh West voted tactically to get rid of the Tories. There was an 8.5 % swing from Tory to Liberal and Donald Gorrie made it fifth time lucky as he was elected as MP for Edinburgh West with a massive 7,253 majority over the Conservatives.

In 2001, with Donald Gorrie in the Scottish Parliament, the Lib Dem colours were carried by Cllr John Barrett, who represented South-east Corstorphine ward on Edinburgh City Council. In 1999 he had been elected with a 1,722 majority over Labour's Gordon Munro. He had experience of parliamentary elections, having also contested the Scottish parliament seat of Linlithgow in the 1999 elections, coming fourth with 7.8 %. He fared somewhat better in Edinburgh West at the 2001 Westminster election, taking 42.4 % of the vote, just 0.8 % less than Donal Gorrie in 1997.

The Tory candidate was Cllr Iain Whyte who represented the Craigleith ward on Edinburgh City Council having been elected in 1999, with a majority of 270 over the Lib Dem's Adam Dzierek. For the Conservative & Unionist Party the 2001 Westminster election was a disaster and their candidate fell to third with 22.5 %, 236 votes behind Labour's Elspeth Alexandra, in a seat which they had held between 1931 and 1997.

In fourth place was the SNP's Alyn Smith with 10.3 % while the SSP's Bill Scott took 1.7 %.

The 1999 Scottish Parliamentary elections provided somewhat of a surprise in Edinburgh West. Donald Gorrie, with his considerable experience from his years as a local councillor had made his mark on the Westminster Parliament with many interventions in the devolution debate. However, despite a shining performance as an MP, Gorrie was rejected by his constituency association when they chose a candidate for Holyrood. The official and somewhat lame excuse give by the association was that they preferred to let someone else get a chance at representing them at Holyrood. Most observers agreed that the Edinburgh West Lib Dem association's motive was nothing less than cynical ageism. Donald Gorrie's major handicap was his age - born in 1933, he was already past the normal retiral age by 1999. It seems likely that Edinburgh West prefered to get a new candidate in and settled while they were comfortably ahead for the first time ever thanks to Mr Gorrie's victory in 1997, rather than risk losing the seat in a few years time when their popularity may have dropped. Certainly, the Tories must have been smiling at the disarray in the local Liberal Democrat association who rejected Donald Gorrie, by far and away the Lib Dem's most able Westminster MP, as their candidate in favour of Cllr Margaret Smith.

The Tories selected a certain Lord Douglas of Selkirk to contest this seat. In fact, this noble lord was none other then Lord James Douglas Hamilton, the Tory MP here from 1974 to 1997. After the 1997 election, Lord James was no longer an MP and although as a son of the Duke of Hamilton he was held the rank of a Lord, this titular honour did not give him the right to sit in the House of Lords. He had renounced the Earldom of Selkirk after his uncle's death in 1994 so as not to cause a by-election - hence he was later rewarded with his own wee bit title as the noble Lord Selkirk of Douglas. In the election campaign, Scottish Conservative leader Mr David McLetchie embarrassed Lord Selkirk by signing a Lib Dem petition to reopen the accident and emergency unit at the Western General Hospital which had been closed by order of none other than the noble Lord Selkirk himself when he was a Scottish Office Minister.

Unsurprisingly, the vote for both the Liberals and Conservatives went down in Edinburgh West in 1999. Cllr Margaret Smith was elected with a majority of 4,583 over the noble Lord Selkirk of Douglas. The Liberal vote fell by 6.7 % to 36.5 % with the Tory vote down 2.5 % to 25.4 %. Noble Lord Duggie was elected to the Scottish Parliament through the regional list as the fifth Lothians MSP thanks to his second place on the Tory list. In third place was Labour's Carol Fox with 21.3 %, up by 2.5 %. Meanwhile the SNP's Graham Sutherland, who had contested Edinburgh West in 1992 and 1997, saw their vote almost double by 8.0 % to 16.8 %.

Margaret Smith was born in Edinburgh in 1961 and educated at Broughton High School. She graduated from Edinburgh University with a very useful MA in General Arts, before working in pensions, for the Land Register and for the UN. She was elected to the new Edinburgh City Council in 1995 and served until her election as an MSP in 1999. She became Convenor of the Health & Community Care Committee, but unlike Donald Gorrie, she has not made her presence felt in the Scottish Parliament.

Lord Selkirk of Douglas was born in 1942 as Lord James Douglas Hamilton, the son of the 14 th Duke of Hamilton. He was educated at Eton School and went on to study Modern History at Baliol College, Cambridge, and Scots law at Edinburgh University. He was a Conservative Whip from 1977 to 1981 before becoming PPS to Malcolm Rifkind. In 1987 he entered the Scottish Office as Minister for Home Affairs & the Environment before taking responsibility for Education & Housing from 1992 to 1997 and Health & Home Affairs from 1995 until 1997 when he was defeated by Donald Gorrie. Lord James could not have been best pleased when his elder brother, the 15 th Duke of Hamilton, urged people to vote Yes Yes in the 1997 referendum and condemned the damage done by the previous Tory government - of whom his younger brother happened to have been a leading member. In the Scottish Parliament Lord Selkirk of Douglas was the Tory Chief Whip & Business Manager and is a member of the Parliamentary Bureau.

The SNP candidate is Alyn Smith, an Edinburgh lawyer, who contested Edinburgh West at the 2001 Westminster election, coming fourth with 10.3 %. The Labour candidate is Carol Fox who came third here in 1999 with 21.3 %.

The SSP candidate is Pat Smith while Bruce Skivington is standing for the Scottish Peoples Alliance.

Assessment:

Rank on Conservative hit list: 8
Swing required for Conservative gain: 5.51 % from Liberal Democrat to Conservative

Rank on Labour hit list: 8
Swing required for Labour gain: 7.58 % from Liberal Democrat to Labour

Rank on Scottish National Party hit list: 42
Swing required for Scottish National Party gain: 9.83 % from Liberal Democrat to Scottish National Party

6 th May 1999 Holyrood Election

Logo	Party	Candidate	Votes	%	% change
	Liberal Democrat	Cllr Margaret Smith	15,161	36.46 %	- 6.74 %
	Conservative	Lord Selkirk of Douglas	10,578	25.44 %	- 2.54 %
	Labour	Carol Fox	8,860	21.31 %	+ 2.52 %
	Scottish National Party	Graham Sutherland	6,984	16.80 %	+ 7.96 %
	Lib/Dem win	Lib/Dem majority	4,583	11.02 %	- 4.20 %

6 th May 1999 Holyrood Election - Regional list vote result

Logo	Party	Votes	%
	Liberal Democrats	9,623	24.34 %
	Conservative & Unionist Party	9,204	23.29 %
	Labour	8,487	21.47 %
	Scottish National Party	8,073	20.43 %
	Scottish Green Party	1,818	4.60 %
	Socialist Labour Party	1,093	2.77 %
	Scottish Socialist Party	490	1.24 %
	ProLife Alliance	59	0.15 %
	Natural Law Party	44	0.11 %
	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)	633	1.60 %
	Lib Dem maj	419	1.05 %

1 st May 1997 Westminster Election

Logo	Party	Candidate	Votes	%
	Liberal Democrat	Cllr Donald Gorrie	20,578	43.20%
	Conservative	Lord James Douglas-Hamilton	13,325	27.98%
	Labour	Lesley Hinds	8,948	18.79%
	Scottish National Party	Graham Sutherland	4,210	8.84%
	Referendum	Stephen Elphick	277	0.58%
	Liberal	Paul Coombes	263	0.55%
	Anti Sleaze	Antony Jack	30	0.06%
	Lib Dem gain from Con	Lib Dem majority	7,253	15.22%

Links

• Alyn Smith (Scottish National Party)

• Lord Selkirk of Douglas MSP (Conservative)

• Edinburgh West and Margaret Smith MSP (Lib Dem)