CHARLIE WHELAN: Canny MSP Fergus Ewing knows that going it alone he is shoo-in
As we all predicted SNP rebel Fergus Ewing has declared that he is to stand as an Independent at the next Holyrood election.
Given that Fergus will be nearly 70 years old at the time of the Scottish elections you may have thought that he would retire from politics but politicians have this habit of thinking they are indispensable and tend to want to go on forever.
Because the Scottish Parliament refused to cut the number of MSPs when Westminster reduced the MPs, we now have different boundaries and the good folk of Badenoch and Strathspey have been shoved in with Skye and Lochaber so won’t get to judge Fergus.
Inverness and Nairn voters will though and my guess is that he will win easily.
It’s obvious that the SNP are extremely unpopular right now as the result of the recent Hamilton by election showed.
They even resorted to the disgusting tactic of talking up the prospects of the extreme right wing Reform Party.
Whatever you think about Ewing he is a canny politician. He knows that standing for the SNP in the Highlands he would probably lose.
He also knows that Independence is less popular right now and is off the agenda for the foreseeable future.
As an independent voice he can play down the idea of separation from the UK.
Fergus also knows that lurching to the Left in the Highlands is a vote loser.
He has opposed all the bonkers SNP policies and concentrated on local issues just as the Liberals do up here.
He has correctly worked out that it is they and not the SNP who he probably has to beat in this seat.
The truth is that Fergus is a traditional Tartan Tory which is why he always sides with the landowners in opposing new national parks and calling for a review of the current ones.
He jokes that the Nationalists will throw everything at him including a camper-van, just to remind folk in case they had forgotten how corrupt the SNP has become.
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• The last few months have seen roads being dug up all over Strathspey especially in Grantown and my village, Dulnain Bridge.
The diggers even managed to wreck the wild flower bed in front of our house. This crazy project is the responsibility of Highland Broadband.
They are a private company funded by you the taxpayer to the tune of £30m to provide fast broadband in the Highlands which we already have, provided years ago by Openreach.
Our BT Broadband is already faster than anyone I know in London so what a waste of our money.
Oh and if you live a few miles out of Grantown you still can’t get fast broadband because the privately owned Highland Broadband won’t go that far!
• I’ve just got back from a short holiday in Italy where I had to go for a family wedding.
We stayed in a small town in Tuscany about the same size as Aviemore.
It was of course a lot hotter than here but one other thing was notable, the very efficient local rubbish collection.
This was organised by the local community not the whole region like here and was therefore much more efficient.
There was a collection every day for five different types of waste in small bins collected by one man in his van.
They even collected bottles which was a good job because being there for a wedding we had lots of them!
Charlie Whelan (Labour) is a former spokesman for Gordon Brown.
