Alan Melville is the UKIP candidate who is at the top of the regional list for Lothian, so if anyone is going to represent the party which aims to take the UK out of Europe in this area, then it will be him.
When we spoke to him in 2015 he was standing for the Edinburgh North and Leith constituency in the General Election. He explained to The Edinburgh Reporter then that UKIP was the only party which had its manifesto properly costed, that they wanted to allow building only on brownfield sites rather than greenfield ones, and that they had costed the effect of that.
This time round he is more caught up with the UKIP leader in Scotland, David Coburn and the way he is leading the party.
Melville is disarmingly honest about his own chances in this election. He said that in a proportional representation system if the party was polling where they should be then he would have a fighting chance of getting elected. But at present the Scottish branch of the party is only polling at 3% while the English section is polling at 20%.
Melville explained that he only got the election leaflets he had with him last Thursday, although he hopes to be able to hand them all out before the country goes to the polls this week. He also told The Edinburgh Reporter that he was only informed that he was the lead candidate for the party on the day the polls closed, which did not allow him to get a place on many hustings in the run up to the election.
He continued: “If I am elected then I will challenge for the leadership. This is not a sudden thing. After the UKIP conference at Llandudno a letter was sent to the National Executive of the party asking for David Coburn to be removed.
He said that the only answer from Mr Coburn so far has been a comment that Melville is ‘bitter and twisted’ but his reply to us was that he is a lead candidate and he is not disappointed at that, but rather he is honoured by the position.
Melville concluded by saying that his focus is very much on 23 June when the UK will vote on the country’s membership of the EU.
This, he said, was the real reason for him being in politics at all.
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
