Christine Grahame - Political Career

Political Career

Grahame joined the Scottish National Party in 1970.

Using her married name, Christine Creech, she was the SNP candidate at the 1992 General Election for Tweedale, Ettrick and Lauderdale. In 1994 she stood for election to the European Parliament, again unsuccessfully.

At the 1999 Scottish Parliament election she fought Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale again. Although she finished second, her position on the SNP regional list took her to Holyrood, after which she divorced and reverted to her maiden name. She contested Tweedale, Ettrick and Lauderdale at both the 2003 and 2007 elections, coming within 1,000 votes of victory on both occasions.

In 2004, she ran as a candidate for Deputy Leader of the SNP after the resignation of Leader John Swinney propelled Deputy Leader Roseanna Cunningham into the contest to replace him.

After the election she was reshuffled from chair of the Scottish Parliament's Health committee to Shadow Minister for Social Justice, generally seen by media commentators as an upwards shift. In January 2005 Grahame was reported to have had an affair with married Conservative MSP David Davidson. In June 2005, she was elected Honorary President of the Federation of Student Nationalists.

In 2009, she took up the cause of a National Library of Scotland employee, who had been admonished for placing what NLS management called an "excessive display" of several large saltire and Lion Rampant flags around his workstation calling it "a deliberate assault on our national flag."

In the 2011 Scottish Parliamentary election, Grahame won the redrawn seat of Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale, beating former Liberal Democrat finance spokesman Jeremy Purvis.