Constance urges joint party election candidates

SNP deputy leadership candidate Angela Constance has given her backing to calls for pro-independence parties to work together in next year’s general election and put forward joint candidates.

Angela Constance: joint candidate call. Picture: Getty

Ms Constance conceded that such a strategy would be a “hard ask for any political party, because it demands a degree of self-sacrifice for the greater good”.

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But she said she believes it is what the wider Yes movement, which saw members of the SNP, Greens, Scottish Socialist Party and others campaign together in the referendum, wants to see happen.

Ms Constance, the Secretary for Training, Youth and Women’s Employment, was speaking after her local branch of the SNP put forward a motion for the party’s conference next month, calling on leaders to “initiate an election strategy, together with other pro-independence parties, groups or individuals, with a view to putting forward a single pro-independence candidate in 2015” for all Scottish seats currently held by Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.

SNP MP Stewart Hosie, who is also in the running to be the party’s new deputy, has already backed a similar approach, stressing the need to “return the largest-ever number of independence-supporting MPs to Westminster”.

Ms Constance said: “We need as many MPs as we can get, so they can put maximum pressure on whatever Westminster government emerges in 2015 to deliver a proper package of increased powers for the Scottish Parliament.

“It would be counter-productive for pro-independence parties to take votes from each other. We worked together in a spirit of friendship and unity during the referendum campaign, and we should go into the 2015 election in the same spirit.

“This is a hard ask for any political party, because it demands a degree of self-sacrifice for the greater good. But I believe this is what the wider Yes movement will wish to see, and I trust my party can be large-hearted enough to accept it.”

After the Breich Valley branch of the SNP put forward the conference motion, she said: “I hope that over the next weeks other SNP branches will put forward similar motions to show that this idea has wide support at the grassroots level of the party.”