Donald McIntosh isn’t your typical politician – he’s helped to build power stations in the Philippines and worked for British Airways Engineering. A chartered accountant in his professional life, the 60-year-old also considers himself an "old punk" outside of work, still regularly attending gigs. He said: “The punk ethos is kind of just do it until somebody tells you you can’t.
“I’ve done business , I’m pretty good at it. I’ll throw myself into this and carry on doing it until somebody tells me I can’t and see if I can make a difference.” Nobody is seriously expecting Mr McIntosh, who is standing for the Liberal Democrats, to win a seat in Bolton West.
The seat is not one of his party’s targets, and, if national polling is to be believed, could switch from the incumbent Conservative, Chris Green, to Labour’s Phil Brickell. Despite joking that he’s "related to most of Scotland" – with a name inherited from his Scottish grandfather – Mr McIntosh was born in Lancaster. However, he admits Bolton is new to him.
Sign up to our newsletters to get the latest stories sent straight to your inbox. Mr McIntosh says he was inspired to stand in the face of what he says is the "damage" caused by Conservative governments. He said: “My parents were of the generation where they did exactly what the government said, isolating themselves all the way through Covid, then my mother had a fall and died around about the same time Boris was partying.
“You get to a p.
