A candidate bidding to represent one of Edinburgh’s new constituencies almost died in 2025, and says campaigning gives sense of something “bigger than me”.
Oliver Thomas, 40, is Scottish Labour’s candidate for Edinburgh North Eastern and Leith, a new constituency created as part of the remapping of boundaries of the former Edinburgh Eastern and Edinburgh Northern and Leith constituencies.
Originally from Wells in Somerset, Thomas spent ten years in medical school and working in London.
Around ten years ago, he moved with his family to Edinburgh while working as a kidney doctor, and now calls the city “home”.
He was selected as the party’s candidate for Holyrood in the constituency in 2025, and has been member of the Labour Party for about twenty years.
Explaining his party choice, Thomas said: “I liken political parties to buses, not taxis. It’s never going directly to my door, but the Labour Party is the bus that’s going most in the direction I think we should be going.”
However, his campaign was temporarily derailed due to a heart attack which happened after his selection. Walking home from church one Sunday, his heart stopped and he collapsed on his bedroom floor.
Thomas credits his wife, also a doctor, with helping save his life by immediately doing chest compressions.
In his own words, Thomas said he “died briefly”.
Reflecting on the incident, Thomas said: “I didn’t have a sort of Damascene conversion moment or any sort of big epiphanies, but it certainly made me think, what if that had been it? What would my obituary have said? What would my eulogy have sounded like if someone had to stand up and make it, if that was the sum total of everything I’d achieved?
“I’ve got two fantastic daughters. I’ve got a really wonderful family, beautiful friends, and I’m very happy with a lot of bits of my life. But do I feel there are other things I could be doing?”
On his recovery, he added: “One half of you wants to stay for every minute alone on your own, and the other half wants to cram as much as you possibly can into your life.”
Thomas attributes his campaign for being “brilliant” for his rehabilitation.
He said: “I’ve been up and down tenement stairs, hit 20,000 steps yesterday, and probably closer to 40,000 today.
“It’s been good for my heart, and it’s also giving me something to focus on at times when I felt a little bit hopeless around going through what I went through. It’s a sense of something that is worth doing, is bigger than me and more important.”
Fixing issues within the NHS are a priority for Thomas—who admits that, as a doctor, he “turned straight to” the NHS chapter of the Scottish Labour manifesto.
He says: “My entire career, we’ve been promised the moon on a stick.
“You know, the constant ‘NHS recovery plans,’ or we get all of these ideas, ‘this is going to work.'”
He adds: “Everyone seems to think they know how to fix the system, but they never asked the right people.
“That is a real problem in our politics, more generally, that we put together white papers and they go out to consultation, and then you ask stakeholders for consultation at that point, instead of involving them at the start and having the right voices in the room to make better policy.”
Candidate for Edinburgh North Eastern and Leith. © 2026 Martin McAdam
Among the local issues that Thomas hears about from voters the state of roads, anti social behaviour, community policing, and access to GP services all feature.
Thomas is running in his constituency against Ben Macpherson, who was MSP for Edinburgh Northern and Leith until the dissolution of The Scottish Parliament for the election.
The Scottish Labour candidate insists that he is not running an “anti-Ben campaign” – but did claim that Macpherson did not speak when invited to at a recent UCU rally in support of striking University of Edinburgh lecturers, when he (Thomas) did.
But Oliver said that he wants to convince voters through his policies, not by bringing down his political opponent.
He said: “I want people to feel that they are actively voting for something, and I want people to feel that they’re actively voting for me, because I understand the problems.
“I’ve had real world experience. I know what they’re going through, I’m with them to fix it, and I will work with them.
“I have some ideas, I have solutions, recognising that I’m not gonna fix it overnight, recognising that there is going to be things that I can do and things that I can’t, but that I will be honest and frank and sincere with them at all stages of that.”
He adds: “I’m not saying that Ben [Macpherson] doesn’t have his heart in the right place.”
Thomas is also ninth on Scottish Labour’s regional list for Edinburgh and Lothians East.
Candidates in Edinburgh North Eastern and Leith include the following candidates:
| Ben Macpherson | SNP |
| Oliver Thomas | Scottish Labour |
| Liss Owen | Scottish Liberal Democrats |
| David Lees | Reform UK |
| Kate Nevens | Scottish Greens |
| Haris Young | Scottish Conservatives |
