East Lothian Liberal Democrats have appointed Stuart Crawford as their interim convener following the resignation of Kit Fraser. He takes up his position with immediate effect and will hold the post until the year end.

Stuart is a former army officer and political and media communications expert who has lived in East Lothian since 1998. Born and educated in Glasgow and Somerset, he spent the earlier part of his life abroad in various

As you will be aware, the recent Scottish Parliamentary elections results were extremely disappointing for us, with a reduction from five MSPs to four. Of the seventy-three constituency seats contested we lost deposits in fifty of them. Here in East Lothian we had set a target of getting at least 7% of the turnout and saving our deposit. Despite of the best efforts of our candidate Euan Davidson and a small band of activists we managed only 3.4%.

There's not much that everyone agrees on in Scottish politics these days, but I hope we can all agree that our top priority now has to be recovering from the significant impact which the pandemic has had on our lives.

There were a number of positive examples of cross-party agreement and co-operation during the initial days of Scotland's response to the pandemic, but unsurprisingly - come election time - we're all back in our respective corners talking down our opponents.

After the past year our communities, our economy and often our families are under immense pressure. It is essential that we spend every waking minute in the next Parliament concentrating on recovering and building for a brighter future.

If you listen to the SNP and the Tories it's as if nothing has happened !