Ballot Box Scotland

Yes, given she had been through the re-selection process and was announced as their candidate.

All three contenders for the SNP leadership in 2023 will be out of Holyrood next year (Ash Regan may be standing again but she's not getting in under Alba, least of all in the new Edinburgh and Lothians East region), what a turn of events

Kate Forbes: Deputy first minister to stand down as MSP The Highlands MSP said she did not want to

Well, that's straight to the top of the list of "surprising SNP retirements for 2026", Mairi Gougeon demoted to second place in that particular ranking now.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Beth Upton has not had her say. Sandie Peggie has had countless coverage At no point did we hear from Beth Upton in the media, at no point was her story told, at no point have we heard about the effect this has had on…

I have this in the Herald today (archive version in comments)

‘When context is missing, minds are easily swayed, and humanity often forgotten.’

www.heraldscotland.com/politics/vie...

These figures aren't final as only one of the major parties has, to my knowledge, completed their list candidate selection process, so we don't know rankings for Conservatives and Labour, which could yet scupper some sitting MSPs (never mind what loss of support could do to Conservatives!)

An "effective deselection" for a list MSP is being ranked lower on the list than needed to elect them at the last election. For nerds, the 5 in 2021 were Claudia Beamish, James Kelly (Labour), Maurice Corry, Gordon Lindhurst, and Jamie Halcro Johnston (Conservative); JHJ was nonetheless re-elected

A graphic showing the distribution of retirements and deselections at this election. The SNP had 64 elected, currently have 60, of which 22 are retiring; of the two formerly SNP Independents, 1 is retiring. The Conservatives had 31 elected, currently have 30, of which 5 are retiring. Labour had 22 elected, currently have 23, of which 4 are retiring. The Greens had 8 elected, currently have 7, of which none are retiring and 1 has been effectively deselected; however, the Presiding Officer was elected as a Green and is also retiring. The Lib Dems had 4 elected, currently have 5, of which 1 is retiring.

Currently, 34 of 129 MSPs are standing down at next year's election: that's the exact same number that stood down in 2021, albeit it'd have been one higher had Christina McKelvie not sadly died earlier this year.

In addition 1 MSP has been effectively deselected, compared to 5 in 2021

Scottish Green Party Leadership Election 2025 The Scottish Green Party approach to leadership differs substantially from everyone else, but a contest following Patrick Harvie’s 17 year tenure as one of the top figures can’t help bu…

Candidates for the Scottish Greens Co-Leadership finalised, with four on the ballot:

- Dominic Ashmole (ordinary member)
- Ross Greer (MSP for West Scotland)
- Gillian Mackay (MSP for Central Scotland)
- Lorna Slater (MSP for Lothians, incumbent Co-Leader)

ballotbox.scot/scottish-par...

A hate campaign against trans people has completely and utterly rotted the brains of many of our politicians and journalists. Said before, saying again, history will not be kind. But it's not too late to acknowledge how utterly, egregiously mistaken you've been, and rebuild trust with queer people.

I feel sick enough reading these. I can't imagine what it must feel like for Scottish Muslims, and Scots Asians with Pakistani heritage. Absolutely heinous things to say. I wonder, do these Labour politicians still feel it was right to intervene to support someone who made these remarks?

"Ms Wishart said: "I have heard Ms Peggie make derogatory remarks regarding people of other ethnic origins and people of other sexual orientations... She's referred to immigrants as needing to go back to their own country, they are coming over here to steal our jobs. These are opinions that don't align with me. There is a mosque being built in Kirkcaldy and Ms Peggie made reference that she had a good mind to post bacon through their letterboxes. I specifically remember it because I found it offensive."

We are now discussing a group chat which is being referred to as "the Benidorm group chat". There are seven people on this group chat, including Ms Nicoll and Ms Peggie. We are now going through several messages Ms Peggie posted in the Benidorm chat about the Pakistani flood where 3,000 people died. This includes comments such as "what do you call a Pakistani flood survivor - must have a dingy", "what goes around comes around, Pakistanis have been flooding Britain for years", "Pakistan looks like a giant bowl of Coco Pops", "There's a new craze sweeping through Pakistan, it's called Swim Fast", and "Raindrops keep falling on Ahmed". After sending these messages, Ms Peggie said "Sorry if that makes me sound like a racist." Ms Nicoll said: "Clearly she is a racist. She refers to people as P*akis and Ch*inkeys and derogatory talk about foreigners needing to go back to their own country and get their own jobs."

We are now discussing Ms Peggie's reaction to a close family member coming out as gay. Ms Nicoll said: "Sandie has a close family member who came out as gay and she was devastated about this. She was really unhappy about this and came to me and asked how I coped with having two close family members who were gay. She wanted an in-depth conversation about it but it was a short and sweet reply, I said 'I love my relatives and I want them to be their true selves and it's actually not that difficult'."

It always completely inappropriate for politicians to intervene in an employment tribunal the way they have. But here's some (this is from another feed) of what this person, who they all went out to bat for and support in various ways, is reported as having said:

EXCLUSIVE: NHS Fife nurse Sandie Peggie mocked victims of Pakistan floods in series of racist posts The offensive messages emerged in an evidence bundle seen by The Courier at the tribunal in Dundee.

Here's the latest (oddly, not reported by the BBC, which has otherwise obsessively covered this - how curious!) on some that Scottish Labour figures like Anas Sarwar, Jackie Baillie, Claire Baker and Melanie Ward have fallen over themselves to back.

www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/politics/...

Donate to BallotBoxScot via Liberapay Support BallotBoxScot's work with a recurrent donation.

It may look very quiet over on BBS at the moment, but I've been working hard over the course of a week off my day job to get more previews and data ready ahead of the 2026 election. If you value my work and can afford to do so, you can chip in to show support here: liberapay.com/BallotBoxSco...

Tributes paid following death of 'good-hearted' South Ayrshire councillor Tributes have been paid following the death of South Ayrshire councillor Mark Dixon.

Sad news from South Ayrshire, where Independent (elected SNP) councillor for Ayr North Mark Dixon has died www.ayradvertiser.com/news/2533450...

Awful, awful, awful idea that completely ruins smaller and opposition parties by allowing large, dominant parties to reelect experienced figures over and over whilst their opponents constantly lose theirs. Constituency MSPs are not elected on a personal basis, they win because of the party logo.

I really fail to see how that differs from First Past the Post, it's a matter of how parties pick their candidates. In this specific case this is an automatic and non-optional open re-selection contest as opposed to e.g. Labour's automatic presumption of uncontested re-selection for MPs under FPTP

He was not at time of posting, seems instead of just marking Independent they took him off entirely then back on.

Fife councillor guilty of sex offences against teenage girl David Graham groomed and sexually abused the girl at a variety of locations in the Fife and Edinburgh areas.

Formerly Labour councillor for Fife's Buckhaven, Methil and Wemyss Villages ward, David Graham, has been convicted of sex offences: he's thankfully no longer listed as a councillor on the website, so a by-election will be held there in due course. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Thinking of that as a "quasi-deselection" in the sense that the Greens are vanishingly unlikely to win a second seat in the region so barring other unforeseen circumstances that bump her up the list, Chapman is first sitting MSP to lose in selections this round (Labour could have one or two as well)

Greens the first major party to complete list selections for next year; amidst much media discussion around challenges, 6 of their 7 incumbent MSPs were re-selected at the top of their respective regional lists. North East's Maggie Chapman however was beaten by Guy Ingerson and is ranked second.

TEST PAGE: Central Scotland and Lothian West Region Preview TEMPORARY TEST PAGE FOR FEEDBACK

SP26 Coverage sneak peek: Central Scotland and Lothian West Region Preview

Ahead of the Holyrood election next May I'll be doing a comprehensive rundown of each region. I've created a test page here just to check it all works and has everything it should.

ballotbox.scot/test-page/

By-Election Preview: Barrhead, Liboside and Uplawmoor (East Renfrewshire) 21st of August 2025 The sad death of a long-serving Labour stalwart kicks off what could be a close contest between them and the SNP in East Renfrewshire's most left-leaning ward.

By-Election Preview: Barrhead, Liboside and Uplawmoor (East Renfrewshire) 21st of August 2025

The sad death of a long-serving Labour stalwart kicks off what could be a close contest between them and the SNP in East Renfrewshire's most left-leaning ward

More important than ever, as senior politicians and whole political parties align themselves with a vicious hate campaign against queer people (particularly trans people) to show up and be heard at Pride - not the sunniest day but big turnout in Glasgow!

The SNP have been governing Scotland for 18 years now, whether people like them or not they are clearly not a single-issue party.

"Vote for me to Abolish the Scottish Parliament" Gus, yer job is bins, schools and social care, simmer doon

Barrhead, Liboside and Uplawmoor nominations closed; it's got four of the Holyrood parties (no Lib Dems), plus Reform and - interesting choice of layer of government to contest on this particular platform - the Abolish the Scottish Parliament Party.

Our lack of clearly codified constitution too could be said to be to their advantage, and the key tenet of that uncodified constitution is "parliament can do whatever it wants", so seeing as Labour won a majority on a manifesto to do this, that would be why it can make this change. Happy to help!

It's worth remembering that almost the entire architecture of UK-level politics, from the voting system, to the party funding system, to the deposit system for ballot access, is maintained in fundamentally and grotesquely undemocratic form because that form advantages Labour and the Conservatives.

Now if you really wanted young people's voices to be heard, you might consider introducing an actually fair and representative voting system too, and doing something about the complete contempt in which some older voices in our politics and media hold young people and their views in...

It is important to remember that in Scotland we gave 16 and 17 year olds the vote for the Independence Referendum and that experience was considered such a huge success it led to the Scottish Parliament *unanimously* voting to extend that right to Holyrood and Local elections. Every party backed it!