THE Liberal Democrats have formally adopted their candidate for East Lothian in next month's General Election.

The Lib Dems had been the first party to select a General Election candidate in the county, announcing back in March that the party's East Lothian convenor Robert O'Riordan would be their prospective candidate in the anticipation of an election being held in the near future.

Now that a General Election has been formally announced for December 12, the Lib Dems formally adopted Mr O'Riordan as their candidate for East Lothian at a meeting in Haddington.

Mr O’Riordan has lived in Gullane since 1999. He is married with three grown-up children and retired from a 35-year career in investment in Edinburgh four years ago.

Mr O'Riordan said: “We have been preparing for this election for some time and are determined to put up a good fight.

"Our message is strong – Lib Dems want the UK to stay in Europe and we also want Scotland to stay in the UK. This resonates with voters throughout East Lothian.

"Voters are fed up with divisive politics and want governments at Westminster and Holyrood to get back to their proper job – tackling urgent and pressing environmental, social and economic challenges. Parties need to work with each other and not against each other to achieve this.

"Mending our broken politics, including constitutional reform and the introduction of proportional representation at Westminster, are top of my shopping list.”

In next month's poll, Mr O'Riordan is up against sitting MP Martin Whitfield (Labour), former Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill (SNP) and Haddington and Lammermuir ward councillor Craig Hoy (Conservative).

Nominations for the election close at 4pm next Thursday (November 14).

In the last election in 2017, Mr Whitfield pulled in 20,158 votes to beat the SNP's George Kerevan (17,075), who finished narrowly ahead of Sheila Low of the Conservatives (16,540). The Liberal Democrats were fourth with 1,738 votes, while independent Mike Allan received 367 votes.