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[/audioplayer]Normally, if a candidate whose party came fourth in a constituency last time tells you they’re going to win, you put it down to election derangement syndrome. But in post-referendum Scotland the normal political rules don’t apply. When Joanna Cherry, the SNP candidate for Edinburgh South West, says she’s headed for Westminster — despite the SNP picking up just 12 per cent of the vote here in 2010 — she is probably right.
Walking round with Cherry as her team cheerfully canvasses in the early evening sunshine, you can’t help but be struck by how prosperous the constituency is. If it were anywhere in England, you wouldn’t bother to ask which way it voted: you’d know it was Tory. For almost a quarter of a century, it was represented by Sir Malcolm Rifkind. Last time its voters returned Alistair Darling to Westminster.
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