Canterbury councillor to run as MP… in Scotland

A sitting member of Canterbury City Council has been selected to run as a Labour MP.

Whilst this isn’t out of the ordinary, the strange thing is that Elizabeth Carr-Ellis is running for a seat in Scotland.

Cllr Carr-Ellis will be running for the constituency of Angus and Perthshire Glens which is over 550 miles away from her St Stephens Ward, as first reported in The Courier.

The drive, not taking into account any traffic, would be almost nine and a half hours.

The new constituency is being formed after last year’s boundary changes and is currently held by the SNP represented by Dave Doogan.

Labour came last in the election in 2019 and failed to secure enough votes to have their deposit returned.

That being said the local party has selected Cllr Carr-Ellis as their candidate for the upcoming election.

She was elected as a city councillor to her ward, St. Stephens in May 2023.

Cllr Carr-Ellis originally hails from Newcastle but worked in Scotland as a journalist for many years in the early 2000s.

She held positions at The Edinburgh Evening News and The Scotsman, her husband also is Scottish and originates from the Leith area of the Scottish capital.

The move by Scottish Labour has drawn criticism however.

Dave Doogan, the current SNP MP told The Courier that the selection was ‘deeply insulting’.

“It’s clear as day that Labour are taking the people of Scotland for granted yet again – so much as that even their own members in Scotland can’t get behind Keir Starmer’s pro-Brexit, pro-austerity Labour Party,” he also said.

“It’s deeply insulting that Labour expect the people of Angus and Perthshire Glens to vote for someone who just last week expressed their excitement at representing a council ward in the South of England for the next three years.”

Cllr Carr-Ellis was open to comment but was unavailable.

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