Ugly sister wins parliamentary award

Edinburgh East MP Tommy Sheppard yesterday won best newcomer at the Spectator’s Parliamentary Awards.

He later tweeted:

Great to receive #specparly newcomer of the year for @theSNP from @AlexSalmond - don't worry, I'm still a republican social democrat.

— Tommy Sheppard MP (@TommySheppard) November 5, 2015

As it happens I was at university in Aberdeen at the same time as Sheppard and I don't remember him being much of a social democrat.

If I recall he was a member of what was called the 'Broad Left', a loose alliance of communists and socialists.

I wrote about him but I didn't know him personally.

We did however share a stage once, in a student union Christmas pantomime. I think he was one of the Ugly Sisters (and if he wasn't he should have been).

Oddly enough the t-shirt he wore featured the word 'Campus' which is the name of the "scurrilous" student newspaper I co-edited. I don't think it was a coincidence.

Image lifted from a fellow student's Facebook page

Comments

[GH]

Was it called the "hard left" by itself? Or did it call itself "the broad left". That was usually the euphemism for student radicals who thought the 70s/80s Labour Party was too right wing.

[Simon]

You're absolutely right. It was the Broad Left. I've changed it.