Election 2005 locally - Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch & Strathspey

So far I am aware of four candidates standing in this constituency, one from each of the three main UK-wide Parties and one from the SNP. There may be others, but when the definitive list is published soon after the nominations close on Tuesday 19th April I will include them in an updated list. (UPDATE - Donnie Macleod, Green Party - added to list)

The links here are to the constitiency websites of certain of the Parties, or in cases where there are no local websites, a profile page in the Party's main UK website or Scottish website. The list is in alphabetic order based on the names of the prospective parliamentary candidates (PPCs) and any updates will be shown in the same order, NOT in Party political order:
Alexander, Danny - Liberal Democrat
Macleod, Donnie - Green
Rowantree, Robbie - Conservative
Stewart, David - Labour
Thompson, David - SNP
- if I discover (or anyone can let me know of) a local Party website for any of those where I don't know it now, I will include it in an updated list.

I have included all these links in a new section in the right-hand column entitled: 'Election 2005 - locally', immediately below the 'UK Politics' section, in which I link to most of the Parties or to 'watcher' sites. You may notice there is no link to the BNP in this list - the omission is quite deliberate as I have no intention of linking to organisations of that nature and I make no apology; I would sooner stop writing this blog than link to it.

Because of the reduction in Westminster representation from Scotland taking effect at this coming election, consequent upon the creation of the Scottish Parliament a few years ago, the Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch & Strathspey constituency is very considerably different from the Inverness, Nairn & Lochaber constituency which preceded it. The main difference is that the new constituency now includes the whole of the City of Inverness, rather than just that part east of the River Ness, which it did formerly, and it no longer includes Fort William. Various people have different ideas of how this will affect the likely outcome here, but it seems that the result may be even more finely balanced thatn it has sometimes been in the past, with the Labour, SNP and LibDem Parties in real contention and the Conservatives most probably trailing in fourth position. There are various views on which of the three main contenders stands the best chance of winning, or coming second, but until the results are known in this new constituency this is just so much speculation, some views based on pure guesswork and others apparently on survey data. I will not enter into this debate.

UPDATE: (Wednesday 6APR05 18.55 BST) I have amended the list above (and the blogroll for 'Election 2005 - Locally' to include Donnie Macleod of the Green Party.