Christina is away just now – she’ll probably be back shortly after you’ve read this, but she’s having a wee break before the term starts again, so I thought I’d fill you in on what she’s been up to.

You’ll have noticed that there hasn’t been a diary for a couple of weeks – I blame the bye-election!  She headed straight off out to Glasgow East to get campaigning as soon as the starting gun was fired (actually, she was on the ground before the starting gun was officially fired).  Christina was part of the forward team that set the scene for the campaign to come as well as getting herself out and about in Central Scotland gathering information and dealing with a couple of issues she had ongoing.  There’re some people who just seem determined to do everything – and then seem to be able to manage it!

So it was Christina who set the tone for the campaign, and did the initial work in a tremendous campaign that brought in thousands of SNP activists from all over the country to work for an amazing victory.  Rumour has it that six thousand activist days were given over during that campaign – most of them actually on the ground in Glasgow East, some done elsewhere.

The spirit of the campaign was fantastic, it was the whole party pulling together in one huge effort to dislodge Labour from what had been one of their safest seats – it was John Wheatley, I believe, who first won it for Labour – 86 years ago.

I’m told by some senior members of the party that the huge effort by the activists meant that we exceeded every target they set for the campaign, bursting through the canvassing target in the first week, but delivering the seat was an enormous task – and we made it.  There’s congratulations, of course, to those who were planning the campaign at every stage – a job well done, people – and to the ones who were carrying out the plan at every stage and, of course, to John Mason, the successful candidate who has already been down to Westminster to sort out how his office is going to run.

An excellent day and night on Thursday, highly enjoyable, even counting the phone calls from Christina who was furious that she was out of the country on one of the biggest nights in the party’s history.

Something else which impressed me – all of the cabinet was out in Glasgow East in some respect or another during the campaign – none of them thought themselves too grand to campaign with the rest of us, none of them thought that they should get special treatment either – they turned up and did a shift with all of the other activists – real ‘leading in the field’ stuff.  Ministers were all there as well – including Linda Fabiani wearing a daft hat when it was raining – and we all pulled together for a famous win.

I see Christina said she’d look at getting some campaign photographs for you.  I’ve included some that I swiped from some other blogs – but they’re all nationalists, they won’t mind.

Calum