Dave Thompson (Scottish politician)


David George Thompson is a Scottish politician. He was a Scottish National Party Member of the Scottish Parliament 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.

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