Elaine Gunn is a first time candidate but has been a member of the Scottish Green Party since the independence referendum.
She told us about her own political journey. She said : “I’m standing because I got tired of listening to myself complain about the state of politics at the moment.
“And I felt like you know, I don’t really deserve the right to complain about things I’m not willing to stand up and do something about myself.
“Specifically I am standing for the Greens because I feel like they were much they were the best match for my personal values.
“I’m a mum of three children. I’ve got three wee boys who are six, eight and nearly 10 and so at the moment, I am mostly consumed with parenting. In the past I’ve been a project manager in the financial services and a communications manager so I’ve got quite a professional background, but I’ve also written a book of feminist fairy tales as well that’s, that’s something that I did when I was out of traditional work.
“I started working for myself, I retrained as a holistic therapist, and wrote a book of feminist fairy tales.
“In Edinburgh West, well obviously, the green campaign issue is the climate crisis. That’s our massive campaign issue. And I think, strictly speaking, it probably trumps all the other ones because it’s a survival issue rather than a constitutional issue.
“For me, it’s an opportunity to campaign and it’s an opportunity to make it clear what a green impact has been for Edinburgh West. From my own experience, we nearly lost half of our opening hours in our local library a few years ago. And that was reversed when the Greens put pressure on the SNP budget to release more money for local governments.
“So at the moment, obviously, we only have Caroline Lucas at Westminster. So it’s just the one of us. By electing more Green MPs, we will be able to bring our campaign issues to Westminster.
“At the moment, we’re looking at the Green New Deal. And that’s a document which has been written in the context of devolution, but would be very easy to propagate across the UK I joined in the run up to the independence referendum.
“That was what really kind of woke me up out of a political apathy. And as soon as I started learning things, and I couldn’t unsee anything that I had learned, I was like, Ah, this is important. I need to get involved.”
Edinburgh West candidates 2019
BOLTON, Craig William – Scottish Labour Party
GUNN, Elaine – Scottish Green Party
HUTCHISON, Graham James – Scottish Conservative and Unionist
JARDINE, Christine Anne – Scottish Liberal Democrats
MASSON, Sarah Louise – Scottish National Party (SNP)
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Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
