Holyrood dynasty ends as Ewing ousted
A ONE-TIME member of the Scottish cabinet, and a member of Scotland’s most famous political family, Fergus Ewing became an SNP rebel who quit the party and ran for Holyrood as an independent.
He was voted into the Scottish Parliament in the first-ever devolved election back in 1999 – and had retained his seat since then.
But without the backing of his former party he was unable to win his Inverness and Nairn constituency again.
Mr Ewing’s defeat means it its the first time ever the Scottish Parliament has not had an MSP from his family in it. His mother Winnie Ewing, known famously as Madame Ecosse, was the oldest MSP elected to Holyrood in the 1999 election – famously declaring when the Parliament sat for the first time that “the Scottish Parliament, which adjourned on March 25, 1707, is hereby reconvened”.
Mr Ewing’s late wife Maggie was the MSP for Moray between 1999 and 2006, when she died from cancer, while his sister Annabelle Ewing was among those MSPS who stepped down at this election.
After the SNP came to power he served as business, energy and tourism minister in the Scottish Government, and was then promoted to the cabinet in 2016, becoming the rural economy secretary.
But after leaving the government after the 2021 Holyrood election, he became a vocal critic of the SNP – first from the backbenches and then as an independent MSP after he left the party
While in the party he defied the whips to vote against then Green minister Lorna Slater in a motion of no confidence – with this resulting in him being temporarily suspended from the SNP group at Holyrood.
In addition, he has criticised the government on various issues, ranging from gender recognition reforms to the delays on dualling the A9 between Perth and Inverness.
Last year, he claimed the party had “chosen over the past four years to self-destruct, with its damaging deal with the Greens, its obsession over gender recognition, the ill-fated deposit return scheme and, by turning its back on hardworking oil and gas workers”.