General election 2024: All you need to know about Edinburgh South

At two of the last three general elections, Edinburgh South has been the only seat in Scotland to elect a Labour MP.

When the SNP swept the board in 2015, just months after the independence referendum, Ian Murray was the sole survivor of Labour’s previous 41-strong Scottish contingent. In 2017, he was joined by six others, but two years later he was on his own again - until Labour won the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election last year.

Labour's Ian Murray, left, is defending an 11,000 majority over the SNP, whose candidate is Simita Kumar. | collage

Ian Murray says his campaign to get re-elected as MP for Edinburgh South is going “really well”. “This has been the only Labour seat in Scotland for the best part of a decade. We're doing what we're doing across the whole country, going door to door, and the message coming back to us from the doorsteps is people are demanding change because they're fed up with both the SNP and the Tories.”

Despite his 11,000-plus majority, he says the seat is in reality a marginal. “As always it will be a straight fight between the SNP and Labour in South Edinburgh, which it has been for the last 10 years. I'm standing on my very strong track record, having been the MP since 2010.

“It’s seen as a relatively safe seat but actually it's always been a marginal seat and it will continue to be a marginal seat regardless of what the mathematics say. The majority we've built is a coalition of voters and those in that coalition can break away - you can never rest on your laurels in politics.

“The only reason you have a relatively comfortable number is because you work very hard. I want to be there for everyone in South Edinburgh. I think I’ve got  track record to prove that and we've got a real opportunity now to deliver Scottish Labour MPs at the heart of the heart of the next UK Labour government.”

As well as the national issues, such as the cost of living, Mr Murray mentions the big new housing developments in the area as a key issue. “Planning is always a big issue in Edinburgh South because of the big expansion of the city, not least the infrastructure associated with that - lack of GP places, lack of transport infrastructure, school places and so on.

“People are really keen about trying to get a stable economy, trying to grow the economy and have some hope at the end of this pretty dark tunnel we’ve been in for the last 10 or 15 years.”

Standing for the SNP is Simita Kumar, who was elected the new leader of the SNP group on the city council just two weeks before the election was called. She has been a councillor for Southside / Newington since 2022.

She says despite the SNP’s disappointing poll ratings, her campaign has attracted help from activists who have not campaigned before. Key issues on the doorstep, she says, include the NHS and the £18 billion of spending cuts which the SNP says both the Tories and Labour would have to make.

“It’s important we talk abut this,” she says. “At the end of the day, these spending cuts will be coming to Scotland, they will affect devolved matters, and not just on a national level but a very local level. People are keen to talk about it and to know what the SNP can do to hold Labour to account. It’s likely to be an incoming Labour government and people are wary that there won’t be an effective opposition at Westminster.”

She says Gaza is also raised a lot on the doorsteps. “I’m going to be bringing a one-line motion to the next full council meeting to say that Edinburgh should recognise the state of Palestine - that’s something we really believe in.”

And she says the question of independence isn’t going away. “A lot of people I’m meeting on the doorsteps are telling me they dint vote for independence in 2104 but now they can see the impact of Westminster and Brexit and how it has translated into austerity and the cost of living crisis, but also the freedom of movement for young people and the impact on Erasmus.”

The Tory candidate Christopher Cowdy, who has been councillor for Fountainbridge / Craiglockhart since 1922, says his canvassing is going better than he expected, though with a bit more apathy than he bargained for. “A lot of people are just fed up with politics, full stop.” And he says many voters are still undecided.

“Part of my pitch is to try and encourage natural Conservatives who have lent their votes to Labour that they no longer need to do that - the SNP are having their woes, they’re not polling particularly well and so I have been trying to make sure natural Conservatives come back and vote Conservative.

“A significant issue is VAT on school fees. I’ve had a lot of strong feedback against that policy because of the effect on the state schools - the extreme pressure on mostly secondary schools in Edinburgh South and concern about an influx of private school pupils ending up going to these already over-stretched schools.”

Otherwise, the economy and tax are the biggest issues, he says, though other people had potholes on their minds.

Lib Dem candidate Andy Williamson, fighting his first election, says Edinburgh South is “quite a Lib Dem place” and while praising Ian Murray as “a good MP” he notes he benefited from “tactical anti-SNP voting”. And he said: “We are hoping we can unhitch that a little bit as the SNP seems to be in decline.”

Mr Williamson runs his own education business which operates private tutoring and after-school clubs in the United States and private tutoring here. He also runs a consultancy advocating for neuro-diversity in the workplace.

He also mentions Labour’s plans for VAT on private schools as a key issue alongside the NHS, the cost of living and lack of affordable housing. “In Edinburgh we have such a high percentage of students who go to independent schools that the VAT is going to involve a lot of them switching to the state sector, so it’s going to swamp the state sector with students. And I don’t think a lot of that money is going to come back into Edinburgh state schools.”

Lynne Lyon, standing for Alba, has lived in Gilmerton all her life. “I’m a familiar face,” she says. “I was born in this area, I live in this area, I went to both primary and secondary school here and I still have the same GP surgery since I was a kid.”

She used to be an SNP activist but left the party a couple of years ago because she thought it was “stangnant” and the momentum had been lost. She is now a case worker for Edinburgh Eastern Alba MSP Ash Regan, based in her constituency office. She insists there is an appetite for independence. “People are fed up with Westminster.”

Former Edinburgh Tory councillor Cameron Rose is standing for Reform UK. He says he was attracted by the party’s “common sense” policies. “I was formerly a Conservative but our economy has been burdened by the highest taxation in a generation, over regulation, high energy prices and crippling restrictions on personal freedoms.  I have long argued against net zero which is ruinously expensive and lacks justifying evidence. It needs scrapped.”

Landscape architect Jo Phillips is the Green candidate. The pro-marriage, anti-abortion Scottish Family Party is fielding Phil Holden.

And there are two independents. Alex Martin says he wants to bring honesty and integrity back into politics. He says: “As an independent politician, I will not be subject to the party whip, so I can vote in the best interests of my constituents.” And Mark Rowbotham is part of a new group called Edinburgh People, which similarly argues against “career politicians” and putting the interests of local people first.

Candidates

Christopher Cowdy - Scottish Conservative and Unionist

Phil Holden - Scottish Family Party: Promoting Traditional Values

Simita Kumar - Scottish National Party (SNP)

Lynne Lyon - Alba Party: Yes to Scottish Independence

Alex Martin - Independent

Ian Murray - Scottish Labour Party

Jo Phillips - Scottish Greens

Cameron Rose - Reform UK

Mark Rowbotham - Independent

Andy Williamson - Scottish Liberal Democrats

2019 result

Ian Murray Lab 23,745 47.7 per cent

Catriona MacDonald SNP 12,650 25.4 per cent

Nick Cook Con 8,161 16.4 per cent

Alan Beal Lib Dem 3,819 7.7 per cent

Kate Nevens Green 1,357 2.7 per cent

Lab majority 11,095

Turnout 75.1 per cent