Scotland’s oil and gas industry is on its knees.
It is being decimated by the hostile policies of the SNP and Labour governments who remain opposed to drilling in the North Sea.
This act of economic vandalism is costing 1,000 jobs a month and is destroying Aberdeen and its proud history as the oil and gas capital of Europe.
But voters in the Aberdeen South constituency have a chance to reverse this decline and ensure it is not terminal.
A by-election will be taking place there on June 18th and I’m delighted to be standing as the Scottish Conservative and Unionist candidate and would be honoured to be the new MP for Aberdeen South.
This by-election is personal for me. Aberdeen is my home city and I hate seeing what is happening to it. I worked in the oil and gas industry for 25 years before entering politics.
I was the co-leader of Aberdeen City Council and I have spent the last five years fighting for oil and gas workers and the North East in Holyrood.
Now I want to continue that fight in Westminster.
I want to be a champion for the industry every single day and stand up to the reckless policies of Sir Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves and Ed Miliband.
Kemi Badenoch was right to say when she visited Aberdeen last week that this by-election is a referendum on oil and gas.
And people will soon be making their minds up as postal ballots land in the constituency.
Alongside my dedicated team of activists, the Scottish Conservatives have already knocked on thousands of doors and the future of oil and gas is overwhelmingly the number one issue that people have been raising.
They want the deeply damaging Energy Profits Levy scrapped and they cannot understand why Norway is issuing loads of new licences in the North Sea while Labour and SNP ministers prefer to import resources, rather than maximising our own.
The decisions being taken by the anti-oil-and-gas SNP and Labour governments do not just impact those working in the industry and their families.
They affect our entire city and those who rely on the positive economic impact from the oil and gas industry for their own businesses.
The stakes in this by-election could not be higher, and I would urge voters to think very carefully if they are casting their postal ballots in the coming days.
Aberdeen South is a two horse-race between me, as the Scottish Conservative candidate, and the SNP.
No other party can win here.
The recent Scottish Parliament election result in this constituency proved that. The Scottish Conservatives were within 1,200 votes of beating the SNP and stopping Stephen Flynn entering the Scottish Parliament.
Pro-UK voters, and indeed pro-oil-and-gas voters who do not want another SNP MP, must unite behind me and the Scottish Conservatives.
A vote for any other party in Aberdeen South, especially Reform, only helps the SNP. Reform are an absolute gift for John Swinney’s party.
They cannot win this constituency, but they can let the Nationalists through the middle by splitting the vote.
The choice could not be any clearer for those in Aberdeen South. They will either end up with an SNP MP whose main priority is independence and whose party still have a presumption against any new drilling in the North Sea.
Or they can back me to be the new Scottish Conservative MP who will champion their interests every single day.
Voters are acutely aware of Labour’s reckless stance and their doubling down on refusing to grant any new licences.
But they should not be fooled by the SNP’s spin machine trying to dupe them into thinking the nationalists are suddenly friends of Scotland’s oil and gas industry.
They are against any new drilling in the North Sea. They published a draft energy strategy over three years ago which at its heart had a presumption against any new oil and gas licences.
The final strategy has still not been published by the SNP.
I say to voters that you will get no fence-sitting on this issue from me.
We must get Britain drilling again. We must maximise our North Sea oil and gas resources.
It is utter madness to be reliant on imports from despotic regimes at a time when people’s energy bills are soaring and more jobs are being lost all the time in the North East.
Every vote in Aberdeen South will count. It will be extremely close. Your vote – whether by post soon, or on polling day itself on June 18th – can help save Scotland’s oil and gas industry.
This article was published in the Scottish Daily Express on the 30th May 2026
