No general election candidate for Greens

The Scottish Greens will not field a Northern Isles candidate in December’s snap general election.

The decision comes after the party learned that they would not be allowed to put forward two candidates who, if successful, would have worked on a job-share basis.

Recent Shetland by-election candidate Debra Nicolson had planned to stand alongside Orkney’s Steve Sankey, with the pair dividing responsibilities.

In a joint statement, the would-be candidates said: “Greens do politics differently, and we saw the option of a job-share as an ideal opportunity in a shared constituency to share the roles. In any other walk of life employers by law must positively explore creative solutions to a changing world and its workplaces.

“Not so the antediluvian House of Commons, though, where the combined effect of legislation is constrained to the candidate ‘himself’, phrased in the masculine, and singular.”

Miss Nicolson said: “It’s ironic that employers have to work hard under equal opportunities laws to accommodate women in the workplace, and yet the so-called mother-of-all-parliaments can’t be bothered to do so. We would have stood if things had been different, and the current laws must be changed.”

Shetland Greens will instead “give priority to local issues and the next Holyrood election (likely to be 2021)” as that represents the “best use of our resources and current capacity”.