Labour pick Ewan Aitken to fight Kenny MacAskill seat

Published on Friday 5 March 2010 09:44

FORMER city council leader Ewan Aitken is to be Labour's candidate bidding to oust Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill from his Edinburgh seat at next year's Holyrood elections.

The former parish minister and councillor for Craigentinny/Duddingston saw off competition from former Lord Provost Lesley Hinds and ex-councillor Shami Khan to win the party's nomination for the newly-named Edinburgh Eastern constituency.

Mr MacAskill won the seat for the SNP at the 2007 Scottish Parliament elections after Labour's former Health Minister Susan Deacon decided to stand down.

He managed to turn a Labour majority of 6,158 into a Nationalist one of 1,382.

The loss of what had been regarded as Labour's safest seat in the Capital was a serious blow to the party. But today Cllr Aitken claimed he was well placed to win it back. He said: "I'm really honoured to have won the nomination and now the work starts.

"I think the SNP is doing so badly at the moment I'm going to win the seat. All around I hear the sound of broken promises.

"I'm on the doorstep a lot and I get a lot of people saying 'We tried the SNP and we don't like it so we're coming back'."

Cllr Aitken was first elected to the city council in 1999 and served as education leader for six years before taking over as council leader in 2006. He stepped down the following year after Labour lost control of the Capital to the Liberal Democrat-SNP coalition.

He is Labour's spokesman on the voluntary sector.

At the last council elections, he topped the poll in the Craigentinny/Duddingston ward, which makes up a large part of the constituency. He was also minister of St Margaret's Church in Restalrig for seven years until 2002.

He announced he was going for the Scottish Parliament nomination at the end of last year, but he faced a strong challenge from Cllr Hinds, who had a high profile from her own time as council leader and later Lord Provost.

And ex-Craigmillar councillor Paul Nolan announced he was backing Cllr Hinds' bid.

But when the votes of local party members were counted at last night's selection meeting, Cllr Aitken won with 51 votes to 33 for Cllr Hinds and 16 for Mr Khan.

Cllr Aitken said: "It was a good selection process. It was a proper debate about policy."

He said he would continue to campaign alongside former councillor Sheila Gilmore, Labour's candidate in Edinburgh East at the general election.

She is defending the seat held for the past 40 years by veteran MP Gavin Strang.