The Scottish Libertarian Party leader is running to win the party’s first seat in the Edinburgh West constituency in the Westminster General Election.
Previously a member of the Scottish National Party, Mr Laird left to found his current party which he previously described as “full blown socialists.”
He is also a former infantry soldier in the British Army who was stationed in Northern Ireland.
Mr Laird described his party as the only one with a “non-aggression principle.”
He said: “You don’t use violence and intimidation and coercion in order to get people to do what you want, to serve your own political purposes. There is no other political party that has that underlying principle. They all will use coercion to get your money to do the things they wish.”
When asked about the prospect of a Labour Government, the Edinburgh West candidate said he “would not be happy” seeing them come to power, but saved the majority of his contempt for the Conservatives.
He said: “I would be extremely happy with the obliteration of the Conservative Party. They deserve to be obliterated. I never thought I would hear myself saying that, but I think this is a party that deserves to be obliterated and never heard from again.”
Mr Laird also said that he believes he would be a strong MP for the constituency because he’s not “easily pushed around.”
He said: “Even though there’s things that government does that I don’t agree with, there are people who are entitled to certain things under the current system, and if they’re not getting those things, government is not standing up its side of the bargain. I’m the kind of guy that will stand up for that and for what people expect from the government.”
Regarding his party’s manifesto this election, the party leader said that the manifesto is largely the same as their manifesto for the 2021 Holyrood election. As that election was held during the Covid-19 pandemic, the chief policy in their manifesto was to end the lockdowns, but also included other pledges like opposing further taxation and regulations and scrapping the controversial Hate Crime Bill.
When asked to clarify his position on the pandemic lockdowns, Mr Laird stated that it was a “grave mistake.”
He said: “The things that they’re trying to blame now on all sorts of other factors, you can trace back to the things that happened then. Suicide rates, health deterioration, the lack of money, lack of funding for certain things because of the money they wasted – £7 billion alone on fraudulent claims for compensation that they’re not trying to get back. All these things can be traced back to the tragic errors that they made under lockdown, locking people up in a house for what was effectively a flu, a bad flu, but effectively a flu. It was insanity.”
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