SHE may be down but Joan McAlpine, the former SNP list MSP for South Scotland, is certainly not out after her departure from Holyrood.
The former assistant editor of The National’s sister paper The Herald polled 15,421 votes in the Dumfriesshire constituency last Thursday, but lost out by 4066 votes to Tory Oliver Mundell. McAlpine then also missed out on a list seat as Emma Harper was the SNP’s top candidate in a region where they gained a single MSP.
However, in a series of tweets after the result, McAlpine said the SNP had built on the progress they made since 2016, “when my campaign increased our vote share by almost 8%, the highest rise in the South”.
McAlpine told The National she would likely take some time out to consider her future, but wants to focus on her family. She is also chair of the non-political Robert Burns Ellisland Trust, and is keen to help with its fundraising. When she spoke to us she was on her way to see her mother and sister, neither of whom she had seen “for ages”.
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McAlpine is happy with what she managed to achieve in Dumfriesshire, increasing the SNP vote there by 3.8%: “We put on 3000 votes. Obviously the Tories put on more with the higher turnout, but I think we should take some heart from that – more than one in three people in Dumfriesshire voted SNP.
“In the 1980s and 90s that was the story of the SNP throughout much of Scotland, putting on extra votes, coming a good second but not winning, and I think that now nobody would have believed 10 years ago that the SNP would be in a good second place in Dumfriesshire.
“It’s really important that we see that as progress and as we look ahead after the pandemic to making the arguments about independence that we do them respectfully and we address the concerns of people who aren’t persuaded in the Border areas. That’s the next thing we have to do – listen to people and take up the issues that concern them.”
McAlpine said in Dumfriesshire there was an element of tactical voting, mostly in areas nearer the Border: “The day before the vote I was actually getting the vote out in Annan, which is quite close to the Border and the Tories were distributing a leaflet basically to Labour voters asking them to vote tactically,” she said.
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“It was plain on the front, it wasn’t badged as a Tory leaflet, but inside it was marked as a Tory leaflet. On the front it just said, ‘vote tactically against independence’ and inside it was saying vote for Oliver, so that was a strategy the Tories used.”
She said the limited sampling they were able to do suggested that people in more traditional Labour areas beside the Border had switched to the Tories, but she was pleased with the SNP’s strength in Dumfries: “Dumfries itself was very strong for us in every area, even in the residential, owner-occupied areas were very strong for us.”
McAlpine said it was too early to say if she’ll stay in politics: “I’m very happy with a lot of the things I’ve done but I’m looking forward to having more time to myself and with my family. It was a good result nationally – a good result for Scotland and that’s the main thing.”
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