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Hello and welcome to Copy House Scots. I'm Cindy you and I'm joined by Katie Boos and Lucy Dunn.

So Katie, another week another by-election and yesterday another one was put on the cards

because Margaret Ferrier at the SNP MP is no longer an MP, tell us about it.

Yes, this is the by-election of Reverend Hamilton West and it's been on the cards for some time.

It goes back to Margaret Ferrier and her Covid breach during the pandemic.

Quite well documented at the time but travelled while having Covid.

The repercussions of which involved her being kicked out by the SNP since then she'd been

standing as an independent and then the standards committee were licking into this and they

came up with a long enough suspension that it meant there was a recall petition

growing quite east to those on these podcasts and ultimately over 10% of her constituents

signed it and now there will be a by-election and it's a really important by-election because

I would argue as I have previously argued in the spectator that probably of all the recent

by-election I think it's the most important in terms of trying to work out what's going to

happen in the next general election and because this is a seat that is historically labour

but the SNP has recently had gains in so Margaret Ferrier won it in 2015 for the SNP.

Was that the first SNP victory there?

Yeah and that was seen as a big blow to Scottish labour then in 2017 Scottish labour clawed it back

then in 2019 she won it back and therefore I think it's a bit of a bellweather seat in terms of

...