SCOTTISH party leaders focused the election battle on key target seats in the north-east of Scotland yesterday as the final weekend of campaigning got under way.
Nicola Sturgeon undertook a mini-tour of constituencies including Aberdeenshire West and Kincardine and Gordon, which the SNP hope to win back from the Tories.
She also got her skates on as she visited Aberdeen’s Christmas market, joined by Scottish Finance Secretary Derek Mackay and Aberdeen North candidate Kirsty Blackman.
She tweeted she had forgotten how much fun ice skating was: “I knew all those teenage Saturday nights at Frosty’s ice disco would come in handy one day.” But she said the campaign trail fun had a serious message, with Boris Johnson’s chance of a majority “on thin ice”.
The Conservatives also had the north-east in their sights, with leader Jackson Carlaw campaigning on Moray with Tory candidate Douglas Ross, who defeated the SNP’s Angus Robertson in 2017.
READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon: Vote SNP to stop charlatan Boris Johnson
Sturgeon urged voters to unite around the SNP to stop Boris Johnson getting back into No 10 and to prevent Brexit.
Her engagements included taking part in a traditional music workshop with Aberdeenshire West and Kincardineshire candidate Fergus Mutch and a Christmas arts and crafts class with children and Gordon candidate Richard Thomson.
The SNP campaign tour will continue today, with Mackay joining candidates in the Highlands, including Ian Blackford and Drew Hendry. With just four days to go until the polls open, Blackford will be in Inverness and Dingwall, warning that only a vote for the SNP is a vote to escape Brexit, protect the NHS and put Scotland’s future in Scotland’s hands.
Sturgeon said: “Scotland cannot afford to live under more Westminster chaos for years and potentially decades – and we certainly cannot afford five years of Boris Johnson.
“This Thursday people in Scotland have an opportunity to unite and demand the right to choose a better future as an independent country – where we always get the governments we vote for and where we have the powers we need to make Scotland the best it can be.”
Unionist parties also chose to focus on independence in their messages.
Carlaw called for people to “lend” their votes to the Scottish Tories to “stop Nicola Sturgeon and her second divisive independence referendum”. Posting online, he added: “There are just five days left to save the Union.”
Speaking ahead of campaigning on Sunday, he said pro-Union voters should come together to back the Conservatives and “put the referendum in the cold storage for good”.
Scottish LibDem leader Willie Rennie used a campaign stop in St Andrews to say that voters have only a handful of days left to stop the SNP pushing for another referendum. He said: “Across the country we are finding people who are willing to lend their vote to the Liberal Democrats to stop another independence vote.
“You don’t have to love every single Liberal Democrat policy, you just have to be among the majority of Scots who look at the prospect of another referendum and say ‘no thanks’.”
Elsewhere, Scottish Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie joined Linlithgow and East Falkirk candidate Gillian Mackay for a demonstration outside Ineos in Grangemouth and urged voters to back his party on Thursday for climate action.
The party wants imports of fracked gas at the site to stop, arguing that since fracking has been ruled out in Scotland, it should not enable the controversial shale gas extraction technique elsewhere.
Meanwhile, Boris Johnson was forced to abandon a walkabout in Westhoughton, Lancashire after around 100 protestors took to the town’s high street, with banners saying “No to Racism, No to Tories, No to Boris Johnson”.
READ MORE: Broken Britain: The Union's demise has been years in the making
Johnson also faced criticism from the father of one of the victims of the London Bridge attack, who accused him of making “political capital” from his son’s death. David Merritt, whose son Jack was stabbed to death by convicted terrorist Usman Khan, attacked Conservative plans to toughen up jail sentences.
He posted on Twitter: “Wake up Britain: this man is a fraud. He’s the worst of us, and he’s taking you for a ride. You may think the options open to you in this election are not entirely to your liking. Me neither, but I’ll be voting for the least worst option available to the country at this point: anti-Tory.”
Meanwhile, Jo Swinson insisted she will remain LibDem leader even if the party fails to make significant gains in the General Election.
The party was once again in trouble after claiming Jeremy Corbyn’s Islington constituency was a marginal seat despite a clear majority.
Swinson said she had her party’s confidence and the LibDems were running a strong campaign, despite slipping in the opinion polls.
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