Donald Gorrie News Today

He was deft at piloting Bills, but less good at party knockabout, being accused of ‘floating like a bee and stinging like a butterfly‘

Lord Selkirk of Douglas, who has died aged 81, was a socially liberal lawyer and aristocrat who was a hard-working Conservative MP for Edinburgh West for 23 years, a Scottish Office minister under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, and finally a front-bench spokesman in the Scottish Parliament.

Lord James, latterly known as Baron Selkirk, was an Edinburgh MP for 23 years and also served as an MSP.

Winner in 2016: Alex Cole-Hamilton (Liberal Democrats) EDINBURGH Western is another part of the capital where the Conservatives should be in the mix, but where they’ve instead been left stranded by anti-SNP tactical voting. The equivalent Westminster constituency of Edinburgh West was continuously held by the Tories from 1931 until 1997, but in retrospect the crucial turning-point was 1983, when it suddenly became a Tory-Liberal marginal in 1983 due to the rise of the Liberal-SDP Alliance...