UKIP, the Scottish Parliament and the smoking ban
Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 9:59
Simon Clark

Scotland: UKIP vows to scrap the smoking ban.

Fair play to Nigel Farage. He's obviously pushed this through himself because it wasn't in UKIP Scotland's manifesto last year.

I also like his pledge to sack MSPs. Sadly it will never happen (not in the foreseeable future, anyway) but it's a nice thought.

Question is, if any UKIP candidates are elected as MSPs to the Scottish Parliament, would they then resign – or sack themselves – on principle, or would they join the gravy train like many other politicians?

It reminds me of when I was a student at Aberdeen. I was editor of the 'unofficial' (non-union) student newspaper and we decided to put forward a candidate in the election for delegates to represent the university at the National Union of Students conference in Blackpool.

There were something like 16 candidates for six places and our man stood on a platform of 'Not Going' if elected. (The NUS was and still is a complete waste of time and money.)

Well, he romped home and, true to our word, we promptly declared that he wasn't going. And he didn't. And all the student union reps had the hump because we'd treated their conference as a joke.

PS. Our candidate who didn't go went on to have a long and successful career in ... the Foreign Office.

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