FUEL’S GOLD
Each week we travel to key election battlegrounds to find out what the big issues are ahead of polling day. Today we spend time in Aberdeen South, where SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn faces a challenge from the Tories and maybe even Labour too
I don’t use it to frame who I am but it undoubtedly played a big role in my life Stephen Flynn on his hip condition
This election is being hailed as the most important in a generation. Our Election Special Correspondent DAN VEVERS is looking at the key battleground seats in a series of special features. He’s finding out what voters think and what the big issues are ahead of polling day.
ALESSER known fact about Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, is that he spent 18 years of his life on crutches. Up at the Torry Battery in Aberdeen, the senior Nationalist tells me all about it. From the age of about 13, he suffered chronic pain due to a serious hip condition.
Doctors wanted him in a wheelchair but he resisted, instead relying on a crutch to get around.
“I don’t use it to frame who I am but it undoubtedly played a big role in my life,” said Flynn.
Then, in 2020, hip replacement surgery ended nearly two decades of constant pain.
“I’m very fortunate the NHS looked after me the way that it did,” he told the Record. “But probably the biggest thing to come out of it is that my friends and colleagues who play five-a-side with me have been able to see how good a footballer I am.
“It’s just a grave pity that Steve Clarke wasn’t able to see it before the Euros started.”
Football-mad Flynn managed to get over to Munich for Scotland’s first match against Germany – sorry to bring up that game – but he’s far too busy defending the seat of Aberdeen South for anything more than a flying visit.
In 2019, Flynn, then the SNP’s leader on Aberdeen City Council, won the seat from the Tories, where the previous MP had been Ross Thomson.
His rise in the years since has been rapid, taking over from Ian Blackford as the party’s Westminster leader in 2022, giving him a Prime Minister’s Questions slot every Wednesday and exposing him to a UK-wide audience.
But in a city where the issue of oil and gas looms so large, is a perceived SNP flip-flopping on the North Sea making the 35-year-old’s bid to hold this seat more difficult?
Flynn insists not. He said: “At this election, we have the Labour Party position, to end new licences, which would cost up to 100,000 North Sea jobs. “We have the Tories who want to put us into a climate denial that oil and gas is going to last forever – it’s not and betrays future generations. “And we have the SNP, who believe rightly in a just transition which protects the workforce we have now, delivering that huge investment we need for the net zero future of tomorrow.” Yet just 18 months ago under Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP-led Scottish Government set out a new draft energy strategy which mooted a “presumption against” new oil fields. Now, ministers like Finance Secretary Kate Forbes say it will be on a “case-by-case basis”.
That energy strategy is still going through a consultation process – but in further mixed messages earlier this month, Flynn’s colleague Tommy Sheppard, SNP candidate in Edinburgh East and Musselburgh, said he “assumed” the no-new-oil policy would stay in place.
That would make the SNP’s position no different to Labour’s, I said to Flynn. “What we need to see is that draft energy strategy become an energy strategy and that will happen in due course,” he replied.
“Due to the fact we have a General Election on and the fact the Scottish Government keeps to the rules, they’re not in a position to release that strategy any time soon.”
For Flynn’s rivals, like former councillor and Tory candidate John Wheeler, that appears rather convenient.
Wheeler told the Record: “They’ve clearly had a presumption against oil and gas for a long time.
“It’s interesting that they’ve just changed that position during the middle of a General Election.”
The Conservatives, he said, are
the and policies SNP industry “only gas “would of sector party” down”. both effectively supporting the oil and Labour claimed the shut the and the
Rishi But Sunak’s I ask Wheeler Tory campaign has to be candid. been a disaster, hasn’t it? Nor have voters forgotten Partygate or the disastrous Liz Truss experiment.
He said: “I share some of those frustrations. On Partygate, I was as angry as I know many voters in. Aberdeen were at the time.”
According to Flynn, “folk want rid” of the Tories in Aberdeen just as polls suggest they do around the country, but he also claims “there’s not a love for Keir Starmer”.
The SNP chief’s two-pronged
attack reflects, perhaps, that Labour could be the dark horse in the race for Aberdeen South.
Their candidate is local councillor and Aberdeen Labour group leader Tauqeer Malik.
Some polling has suggested the constituency could be in play for Keir Starmer’s party for the first time in a decade – it was represented by Labour stalwart Anne Begg from 1997 to 2015.
Labour’s improved prospects in the north-east have seen Ian Murray – likely the next Scottish Secretary – among those campaigning in Flynn’s seat. But doesn’t the party’s position on new oil fields put it at a disadvantage? “We’ve made clear about oil that it’s not a cliff edge and we are not going to turn off the taps,” said Malik.
“We will protect jobs and people understand – and now, we are getting a very good response from our voters.”
He brands the SNP’s North Sea attacks on Labour as “desperation” – and hopes voters in Aberdeen will be drawn to Labour’s pledge for a new publicly-owned energy company, GB Energy, headquartered in Scotland.
But with the Granite City dubbed the future net zero capital of Europe, surely Aberdeen is the natural HQ and why hasn’t Starmer announced it already? Malik said: “It’s up to the Labour leadership but I’m very optimistic it will be in Aberdeen,” admitting he’ll “absolutely” be disappointed if it’s not.
It remains to be seen if Aberdeen South will turn into the three-way tussle Labour hopes for.
Back on the subject of Flynn’s hip condition and his difficult formative years, the SNP politician reflected: “It’s provided me with the confidence and, I guess, the strength of mind to deal with anything that’s in front of me.”
In a seat that, in the last three elections, has flitted from the SNP to the Tories and back, what’s in front of Flynn on July 4 could be an almighty fight.