• Cole-Hamilton takes on judo champ and pledges to restore Highland services
• Cole-Hamilton: Time to beg UK Government and European operators for vessels for Dunkirk-style effort to tackle ferry crisis
• Greene: Scottish Tory economy plans show they are the ‘nasty party’ again

Cole-Hamilton takes on judo champ and pledges to restore Highland services

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton has today tried his hand at judo alongside former Commonwealth medallist, British champion and Highland councillor Connie Ramsay, as he set out his party’s pledge to restore services to Highland communities.

In September 2025, Connie Ramsay won a Highland Council by-election for the Scottish Liberal Democrats with 38.8% of the vote, taking a seat previously held by the SNP.

In their forthcoming manifesto, the party will commit to “end the era of SNP centralisation” by:

• Increasing the range of NHS services available locally;
• Ensuring decisions about health services are taken as close as possible to the communities they affect and that any reform does not result in top-down centralisation;
• Treating councils as equal partners with multi-year funding deals and new freedoms to innovate.
• The party has continually campaigned for the restoration of consultant-led maternity services in the Far North. The party also forced the SNP’s bureaucratic ministerial takeover of social care out of the Scottish Budget after ministers threw away £30 million – equivalent to the annual salary of 1200 care workers, and money that could have been spent helping people like Margaret MacGill who Alex visited yesterday.

Alex Cole-Hamilton said:

Our country works best when decisions are taken as close as possible to those they affect. Right now, people don’t feel like they are being listened to or that they have the means to roll up their sleeves, do things differently and change their area for the better.

Almost two decades of SNP centralisation has drained local communities of the ability to shape their own future. Care homes and maternity services are just some of the facilities that have gone as a consequence. The viability of some rural and remote areas is being threatened by the lack of public transport, the ferries fiasco, the housing emergency and skills shortages.

Scottish Liberal Democrats know that every place has its own character, its own needs and priorities. We will shift power out of Holyrood and into local hands, so you can get on with improving where you live without waiting for the say-so of ministers in Edinburgh. From city centres to remote islands, and everything in between, we’ll make sure your area has the services and opportunity to live, work and raise a family.

Wherever you are, every Scottish Liberal Democrat elected in target constituencies like Caithness, Sutherland & Ross, and through the peach regional ballot paper, will deliver change with fairness at its heart.

Cole-Hamilton: Time to beg UK Government and European operators for vessels for Dunkirk-style effort to tackle ferry crisis

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton has today said that John Swinney should be on the phone begging the UK Government and ferry operators around Europe for extra boats to alleviate the ferry crisis.

His call comes as ferry operator CalMac announced that almost a third of its entire fleet is unavailable due to unplanned problems or planned maintenance.

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said:

I repeatedly asked for Parliament to be recalled so ministers could give a proper response to the ferry crisis. Unfortunately, coastal and island communities do not matter to the SNP so minsters said no.

This situation is beyond a joke. Right now islanders waiting on medical care are trapped on their islands. Businesses are seeing their shelves lie empty. Tourists are being turned away.

The government should be pulling every lever to help them out including encouraging anyone with suitable vessels to chip in and get folk on and off our islands. We need a Dunkirk-style effort

Rather than posing with SNP activists, John Swinney needs to get on the phone to the UK Government and European partners to ask them whether there are ferries available elsewhere in the UK or in nearby countries which might be able to take up some of the slack on Scottish routes. At the moment their solution seems to be robbing Peter to pay Paul by shuffling Scotland’s ferries around without addressing the underlying shortage.

Firms like Red Funnel, Condor, Wightlink and Steam Packet all run domestic services in the UK. John Swinney should be begging them to deliver a Dunkirk-style flotilla and help get our islands open.

Finally I would like to thank the ferry crew and shipyard workers who are desperately trying to fix these boats. They have been let down by SNP ministers and transport bosses almost as badly as islanders have been and I think it’s important to thank them for their work trying to keep lifeline routes afloat at this difficult time.

Greene: Scottish Tory economy plans show they are the ‘nasty party’ again

Scottish Liberal Democrat economy spokesperson Jamie Greene has said that the Scottish Conservatives’ finance plans, which the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has said, “may not survive contact with reality”, show that the Tories are once again the “nasty party”.

The respected think tank made its damning assessment in its initial response to the 2026 Tory manifesto launched in Edinburgh.

Mr Greene condemned his former party’s reckless plans which amount to tax cuts paid for by the poorest in society and would push more Scottish children into poverty and make life harder for people living with disability and mental ill health.

On how the Tories’ plans would be funded, the IFS was even more critical, slamming plans to fund Tory policy by cutting backroom and administration costs as “not credible” and raising serious questions about the effect on the quality of essential services.

Scottish Liberal Democrats are committed to fair economic growth and will shortly publish a fully-costed manifesto focused on building a growing Scottish economy that will benefit everyone.

For the first time in a long time, Scots can vote for a Scottish Liberal Democrat MSP wherever they live using their second peach-coloured regional ballot paper to choose change with fairness at its heart.

Jamie Greene said:

If there was any doubt that the Tories under Russell Findlay are once again the nasty party of Scottish politics, this manifesto, which picks the pockets of the poorest and most vulnerable to line those of the wealthy, confirms it.

Scots will shortly give their verdict on this Tory callousness by rejecting them and returning more Scottish Liberal Democrat MSPs, committed to change with fairness at its heart.