Dave Thompson (Scottish politician)

David George Thompson (born 20 September 1949) is a Scottish politician. He was a Scottish National Party (SNP) Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) 2007−2016. He was first elected in 2007 as a Highlands and Islands, then elected for the Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch constituency in the 2011 election.

Dave Thompson
Convener of the Scottish Parliament Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
In office
14 June 2011 – 7 November 2013
Preceded byGil Paterson
Member of the Scottish Parliament
for Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch
In office
5 May 2011 – 23 March 2016
Preceded byJohn Farquhar Munro (as member for Ross, Skye and Inverness West
Succeeded byKate Forbes
Majority4995
Member of the Scottish Parliament
for Highlands and Islands
In office
3 May 2007 – 22 March 2011
Personal details
Born (1949-09-20) 20 September 1949
Lossiemouth, Moray, Scotland
Political partyScottish National Party

Early life

Thompson was born in Lossiemouth, Scotland.

Political career

In 2007, Thompson was elected from the regional list as a MSP for the Highlands and Islands.[1] Thompson received some media attention in the aftermath of the 2007 election because he pointed out to the returning officer that the number of additional members for each party had been wrongly calculated.[2] The initial calculation would have given Labour four additional seats and the SNP none, which would have resulted in Labour gaining a plurality and winning the election. After Thompson challenged this calculation and the figures were correctly calculated, Labour were allocated three seats and the SNP two. This resulted in the SNP gaining a plurality of one seat and enabled them to form the Scottish Government.

In 2011 Thompson was elected for the Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch constituency.[3]

In 2014 Thompson was one of seven SNP MSP's that voted against allowing same-sex marriage in Scotland.[4]

In July 2020 Thompson was linked to proposals to set up a new pro-Scottish independence party to contest the 2021 Scottish parliament election, predicting the party could win up to 24 seats, and arguing that voting SNP with both constituency and list votes would "achieve nothing."[5]

gollark: Basically just anyone who wants to run one, I guess.
gollark: Operators meaning?
gollark: Unfortunately, the P2P bit is proving quite hard, and will probably take ages.
gollark: I also have a skynet/modem relay on SC, so it's backwards-compatible, if you ignore reply channels which nobody likes.
gollark: Stop with the metadebate, it helps nobody.

References
  1. "MSPs: Previous MSPs: Session3: Thompson, Dave". Scottish Parliament. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  2. Grandfather was SNP election hero BBC News, 5 May 2007
  3. "MSPs: Previous MSPs: Session4: Thompson, Dave". Scottish Parliament. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  4. BBC News - Scotland's same-sex marriage bill: How MSPs voted, 4 February 2014
  5. Daily Record - SNP veteran to quit to form new Alliance for Independence party to 'Max the Yes' vote at Holyrood, 14 July 2020


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