Succession

Politics is, at least in part, about succession - younger candidates taking the place of older ones, from whom they have learnt their skills and hopefully their principles too.

But it is also about persistence.

I was struck by those thoughts this afternoon at the SNP Conference in Aberdeen when introducing my constituency assistant , 19 year old Keir Lowe - who is hoping to fight his first electoral contest this May - to my old friend Roger Mullin, the 69 year old MP for Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath who was elected to Westminster in May 2015 some 41 years after fighting his first Parliamentary election in South Ayrshire in February 1974.