When Sky News came and interviewed me, there were various requests and suggestions for PBisms I could try to slip into the package. I failed.

But in the early hours of this morning, after hearing the ANME result from the returning officer, we were asked to show no sign or share any comment about the result of what had been a very tight race.

I couldn’t resist making a subtle gesture to a pre-planned stunt as I passed our encampment. And so it was that as the result was read out and the SNP and Tory supporters in front reacted in genuine surprise, there were a couple of LDs eating literal bags of popcorn.

The campaign in Aberdeenshire North and Moray East was brutal. The political assassination of Tory MP David Duguid which got us started. The blue-on-blue expenses scandal story leaked by Banff and Buchan Tories against their new candidate. The smear which took out the Labour candidate. The smear which adorned the front page of the Scottish Daily Mail which tried – and failed – to take out the Reform candidate. The attempted smear against me which didn’t get printed but got mentioned in passing in another piece as if it had run.

On Facebook? The cybernats called me a nonce. A twat. A wanker. A gype. A rocket. A cnut. A colonialist. That I wear jackboots to crush Scots. Endless demands that I “go home”, “piss off back doon south”. And yet, despite their pyrrhic victory here, they have been crushed so that they fit into a minibus. Or is that a motorhome?

I will write a second thread about prospects in Scotland towards Holyrood 2026. But for now I say this about running for parliament – what a buzz. I have had The Fear. I have schmoozed Sky News so that I was the only candidate shown in a positive light. I debated the leader of the ScotCons and got the crowd applauding me and heckling him.

Thanks to all my friends on Political Betting for your support regardless of your political persuasion. It meant a lot.

Rochdale Pioneers