By Georgia Banjo
Torcuil Crichton, the Labour candidate hoping to win the Western Isles from the Scottish National Party (SNP), leant against his red Mini and polished off a packet of prawn-cocktail crisps. “Wee red car, big red change”, read a sign on the window. An island boy, he had grown up near Stornoway, the largest town in the Outer Hebrides. His portfolio career had included a spell as a screenwriter – he once wrote a drama for Gaelic TV about a teenager who had hallucinations of Elvis – and more than a decade as a political journalist in London. Now he was back, with a grey quiff and a tweed jacket, trying to convince voters in the far-flung constituency to choose a Labour government “or drift off into the Atlantic”.
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