Salmond eyes Westminster seat but must win in Lib Dems stronghold

Long queues trailed outside Strachan's on West High Street in Inverurie recently as the former Scottish first minister Alex Salmond sat inside signing copies of his memoir of last year's referendum campaign.

“The place was absolutely stowed out,” Salmond said happily later. The Scottish National Party figure already represents Inverurie and surrounding districts in the Scottish parliament. Now, he wants to do so also in the House of Commons.

The bookies regard victory as a formality, even though the area voted 60/40 against Salmond’s desire for independence last September – one of the most decisive rejections anywhere in Scotland.

The Gordon constituency has been held by the Liberal Democrats' Malcolm Bruce since 1983: "Seven elections, it is time for a change," he tells a woman who comes to the door Cherry Row, Udny Station.

Bruce's replacement is Christine Jardine, a former journalist and, for a time, a special adviser in Downing Street and the cabinet office. Her hopes of victory depend on an unprecedented amount of tactical voting.

Jardine expresses confidence: “Salmond is the Marmite politician: you either love him, or hate him and there are a lot of people around here who have the latter opinion, I can tell you,” she says.

Five years ago, due to the careful tending by Bruce, Gordon was regarded as a safe Liberal Democrats seat, where he won with 36 per cent of the vote, ahead of the Scottish Nationalists on 22 per cent, Labour on 20 per cent and the Conservatives on 19 per cent.

No safe seats

Today, there are no safe seats in Scotland for the Liberal Democrats, unpopular because they went into government with the Tories and also because of the rise of the SNP.

Tactical voters do exist. During a canvass of Udny Station, Jardine met quite a few of them. “My family have always been Conservative, as have I, but I will be voting for you. I’ve no time for Alex Salmond,” one man tells her.

A quick succession of like-minded voters follows, though none choose to give their names in a community where the memories of last year’s campaign are still vivid, on both sides of the argument.

The opening phase of Salmond's election campaign has had some unusual elements, including a now-abandoned plan to spend part of it in the US for the launch of his memoir, The Dream Shall Never Die.

His publisher, the Rupert Murdoch-owned HarperCollins had pencilled him in for book signings during what it described would be “a whirlwind tour” of New York and Toronto last week.

This meant that he would not be in Gordon for a hustings debate last Tuesday. SNP Banff and Buchan MP Eilidh Whiteford, who holds the seat Salmond previously held in the Commons, was lined up to take his place.

Locals were told Salmond was missing because he had “a prior engagement”. The trip was dropped when the press and the SNP found out about it – though it is not clear which got there first.

“There is a certain presumptuousness about that. He has told people, ‘I’m your next MP’,” says Bruce. “Call it lèse-majesté,” says Jardine.

The Salmond pitch to Gordon voters is a simple one: he will be one of the big players in Westminster after the May 7th election if the SNP holds the swing vote that keeps Labour in power but dependent.

Salmond, who lives with his wife Moira at the Old Mill in Strichen in the northeast of Aberdeenshire, near Fraserburgh, is a frequent sighting, particularly during the region’s summer agricultural shows.

The vote he has successfully got in Aberdeenshire during his career is often a conservative one, with a small 'c', one that may turn in time because of the distinctly left-wing tones from Salmond's successor, Nicola Sturgeon.

In addition, a succession of decisions by the SNP in Holyrood to centralise power has irritated some: the creation of Police Scotland took local policing decision-making away, the same with the fire services.

Gordon also includes the northern edges of Aberdeen City, which is facing cold winds because of the near-halving of the price of oil – something the SNP predicted would not happen in its independence prospectus to voters last year.

Nevertheless, Jardine faces a mountain to climb if she is to have any hope of stopping the SNP heavyweight. It will depend on those who voted Labour and Tory to abandon past loyalties. The Conservatives are running Colin Clark, though some of their business people supporters are strongly rumoured to be encouraging others to abandon him.

Former education secretary Michael Gove during a Newsnight interview last week, gave sanction, as it were, to Scottish Conservatives to think the unthinkable, telling them he would be prepared to vote Labour to keep out the SNP.