Scottish Elections: Independents
Posted by: Richard in Glasgow, Politics, Scotland, Scottish elections, UKA few Independent candidates appear on the lists I’ll have in front of me when I vote on Thursday, but as so far I’ve very little idea what any of their policies are.
Muhammad Shoaib is standing in Glasgow council elections AND as a Glasgow regional list candidate. We received a flyer that effectively said no more than “Please vote for me as your 1st choice”. Then a rather confusing plea to vote for Nicola Sturgeon at the Govan constituency level, although the quote attributed to her backing him is referring to his council bid. Came across as a bit muddled.
Most worrying of all there is not a jot of what his policies are. A google search shows he’s a justice of the peace, but not much more than that other than council candidate lists.
Independent candidates are almost always going to face an uphill challenge, unless there’s a big issue they can get behind and rally votes. A local hospital threat, or an unpopular or perhaps a dishonest MP. Certainly it’s very rare for Independent candidates to get very far at all – even at council levels – unless they have something, even if it’s just force of personality. So in the spirit of public interest, I’ve e-mailed Mr Shoaib to ask about his policies. Hopefully he’ll let me know what they are. I’ll share them here if I find out.
Most of all though I’m very surprised that more Independent candidates haven’t jumped on the internet bandwagon given it’s reach to motivated and interested voters, even just to include a URL on the flyers for “more information”, and more detail on their policies. As it is right now, I’ve certainly got no intention of voting for somebody who won’t tell me what they plan to do, or what their policies are. If my experience is representative of the ward as a whole he’s not planning on getting his deposit back…
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May 1st, 2007 at 9:01 pm
According to this article:
Right. Then there is the downright surreal:
And here was me thinking that spontaneous generation had been discredited. In addition, the party leader has pronounced:
It’s a good these guys were not around when Screaming Lord Sutch was standing; they would have split the loony vote.
May 3rd, 2007 at 11:11 am
[...] can’t vote for the Independents. There’s just too little information out there. Incomplete fliers, and vague ones with [...]