Jackie Baillie has been reselected by the Dumbarton Constituency Labour Party to contest the seat again at next year’s Holyrood election.
The MSP has held the seat for Labour since 1999 when she became the area’s first ever female parliamentarian following the inaugural Scottish Parliament elections.
She was re-elected in 2011 with an increased majority, an election where Dumbarton was notable for being the only seat in Scotland to record a swing from the SNP to Labour.
After last night’s vote she said: “It has been an honour to serve as the MSP for Dumbarton for the past 16 years.
“Standing up for Labour values in the face of SNP and Tory austerity is not only a great privilege but a real necessity.
“One of my proudest moments during this session was forcing the SNP to concede that it had the power and the resources to cancel out the effects of the bedroom tax in Scotland.
“John Swinney said he didn’t want to ‘let Westminster off the hook’ in the run up to the referendum, but my backbench bill forced him to do the right thing by vulnerable Scots and effectively abolished the bedroom tax.”
The constituency includes Dumbarton, the Vale of Leven , Helensburgh and the Rosneath Peninsula.
Helensburgh councilor Maurice Corry has already been selected as the Conservative candidate, while Gail Robertson of Alexandria has been chosen by the SNP.
In the 2011 election Jackie Baillie received 12,562 votes, ahead of the SNP’s Ian Robertson (10,923), Conservative Graham Smith (3,395), Lib Dem Helen Watt (858) and Independent George Rice (770).
Leave a Reply