Stephen Flynn's General Election 2024 fight to hold Aberdeen South heats up
dailyrecord.co.ukA relatively little known fact about Stephen Flynn, SNP Westminster leader, is that he spent 18 years of his life on crutches.Up at the Torry Battery in Aberdeen, the senior Nationalist tells me all about it.
From the age of about 13, he suffered chronic pain due to a serious hip condition.Doctors wanted him in a wheelchair but he resisted, instead relying on the crutch.“I don’t use it to frame who I am but it undoubtedly played a big role in my life,” said Flynn.
Then, in 2020, hip replacement surgery ended nearly two decades of constant pain.“I’m very fortunate the NHS looked after me the way that I did,” he told the Record. “But probably the biggest thing to come out of it is that my friends and colleagues who play 5s with me have been able to see how good a footballer I am.“It’s just a grave pity that Steve Clarke wasn’t able to see it before the Euros started.” Footie-mad Flynn managed to get over to Munich for Scotland’s first match against Germany - yes, sorry to bring up that game - but he’s far too busy defending the seat of Aberdeen South in the general election for anything more than a flying visit.
In 2019, Flynn - then the SNP’s leader in Aberdeen City Council - won the seat from the Tories, where the previous MP had been Ross Thomson.His rise in the years since has been rapid, taking over from Ian Blackford as the party’s Westminster leader in 2022, giving him a primetime PMQs slot every Wednesday and exposing him to a UK-wide audience.But in a city where the issue of oil and gas looms so large, is perceived SNP flip-flopping on the North Sea making the 35-year-old’s bid to hold this seat more difficult?Flynn insists not. “At this election, we have the Labour Party position, which is to end new licences,
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