CAITHNESS, Sutherland and Easter Ross is the biggest constituency in the UK by quite some margin.
It takes around three hours to drive its full length, according to SNP candidate Lucy Beattie. Most nights after campaigning, she gets home past midnight.
But her previous life as a farmer has prepared her well. Lamb shearing season, which lasts around the same length of time as the “short campaign”, also means putting in long hours.
She is gunning for Jamie Stone’s job, who has represented the gargantuan Highland constituency for the LibDems since 2017.
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Excepting a brief flirtation with the SNP at the height of their powers in 2015, the area has been reliably Liberal territory for decades. Stone was not available to be interviewed for this piece.
(Image: NQ)
Beattie (above) has lived many lives before her foray into the world of politics. At the age of 21, both her parents died leaving her to take over the family farm. She later moved into education, working as a teacher at Ullapool High School and with the Scottish Crofting Federation.
Just before the election was called she finished her PhD and has been working remotely as a teaching fellow at Edinburgh University since February this year.
Beattie sees the experience she’s gathered over the years as a key advantage over her LibDem rival, who has been a politician more or less consistently since he was first elected to what was the Ross and Cromarty District Council in 1986.
“He’s a career politician and I’m not a career politician,” she says. Stone would point to his experience running the family business, a stint in oil and gas and a series of odd jobs after university, including gutting fish, working on building sites and teaching English in Sicily.
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People have never been more “politically disenfranchised” as they are now, says Beattie, who believes her real-world experience gives her the edge to represent ordinary folk in Westminster.
The cost of living bites harder here, she says. People must travel further for work and to get the essentials. “If I want to go to a big shop, I have to travel 50 miles,” says Beattie.
Such are the pressures in the Highlands, that “the constitutional issue has rarely come up on the doorstep for me”, according to the SNP candidate.
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Independence is line one, page one of the SNP’s manifesto, but it appears to be playing a less central role in Beattie’s campaign.
She is focusing more on addressing the issues affecting people on a daily basis in a part of the country so easily forgotten by the big centres of power.
But politics in the Highlands is less tribal than in other parts of Scotland. Independent councillors outnumber the SNP on the local authority.
For Stone, his challenge will be to convince voters that it’s better the devil you know.
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