“I HAD hoped for not another election in December, but being out knocking on people’s door during this June weather is not much different,” Lib Dem candidate Alistair Carmichael jokes as we walk through Brae into a drizzle that quickly makes you feel miserable. Over the next two weeks Shetland News will be joining all the candidates actively out on the election trail to find out first-hand what are the issues and topics on local folk’s minds. It’s not the most effective way of canvassing, Carmichael concedes, and generally he spends far too long speaking to people – at least that is what party strategists tell him.
But there is no substitute to talking to people directly, looking them in the eye, and getting a good feel for how the land lies. The incumbent MP defends a solid majority of 45 per cent against Robert Leslie of the SNP who came second at the last election in December 2019 with 34 per cent of the vote. And as he has been saying ever since he was first elected as the Orkney and Shetland MP in 2001 in one of the safest parliamentary seats for the Lib Dems, he is taking nothing for granted and puts in some solid shifts visiting most of the 30 or so inhabited islands and speaking to people face to face.
One of the main topics that came whenever a door was opened was transport and the reliability and cost of it, but also the difficulty in booking a cabin on the ferry when needed. Broadband speeds, the environment, climate change and the lack of a proper comm.
