Ayr: Inside the four-way race in Scotland's most marginal seat

With the SNP’s constituency vote share set to fall more than 10 per cent this time round, it may be expected that the Conservatives would take the seat with relative ease.

But the Tories’ downturn in fortunes over the past five years means it is all to play for.

Labour reckons it has the biggest chance of any unionist party (it won all four Ayrshire seats at the general election), while a recent MRP poll predicted it would go to Reform UK.

Ms Brown - who has been the Scottish Government minister for victims and community safety since 2023 - is standing again for the SNP.

Her victory in 2021 marked the first time that the seat had gone to the Nationalists.

Labour won the seat in 1999, but it was then held by the Conservatives’ John Scott from a 2000 by-election until the last Scottish Parliament election.

Ms Brown said: “This was a Conservative stronghold and it’s the most marginal seat.

“So since 2021 I've just been working as hard as I can.

“We've been out pretty much since last September, knocking on doors, working hard. I'm just going out and I'm just talking to everybody. To me, it feels quite positive, but I do not take anything for granted.”

Reform UK is expected to do well in Ayrshire, but all parties have suggested that the Ayr seat could be an outlier.

This goes against several polls which have suggested that Ayr could be one of only a few constituencies which Nigel Farage’s party wins.

Ms Brown said: “I know that there's been a few polls that have been predicting that Reform could take this seat.

“It's not really what I'm hearing on the doors, unless it’s silent people that who just won't talk to me.”

The Tories’ polling around the UK is well down on where it was in 2021, making it more difficult for the party to take the seat.

Their candidate is current south of Scotland MSP Sharon Dowey.

She said that “the Conservative vote is really holding up” and “we’ve hardly had any mention of Reform” on the doors.

Until May last year, Ms Dowey’s husband, Martin Dowey, was the Conservative leader of South Ayrshire Council.

Mr Dowey was investigated by the police - but faced no criminal action -over alleged procurement fraud after a recording emerged of a meeting between Mr Dowey and a businessman.

Labour’s Brian McGinley believes his party will win lots of traditional Conservative voters.

Mr McGinley said: “I think the way in which the Conservatives have messed up the council locally is having an impact on their voters.

“In fact, I would say it's collapsed locally. On the doors people are saying I'm not voting Conservative again, looking for alternative. And I think it's a really close race here.”

Mr McGinley said: “Ayr used to be an attractive town centre destination, where people would come over.

“People are not coming to the same degree. They'll come to the beach and then they'll go home again. So we need to do something rigorous about that.”

Ms Brown agreed: “I do realise that all town centres across the whole of Scotland, and the UK for that matter, are struggling with the change in shopping habits.

“But Ayr from being such a historically [busy town centre], like people used to be done for their holidays, and they've got this sort of rosy vision of history of what it used to be like, and they want it to be like that again.”

One thing which could count against the SNP is the failure to deliver the Carrick Glen National Treatment Centre.

The NHS bought over the private hospital for £1.8 million in 2022 to reduce orthopaedic waiting lists but it has been stalled due to funding problems.

Mr McGinley said: “The SNP spent £1.8 million on Carrick Glen clinic about two years ago, and it's still not open.

“It's lying derelict now that was meant to deal with people's operations, to get on top of things about the waiting lists, and they have just drawn a line under that and ignored it.

“Now people are really annoyed here locally about the waste in the NHS.”

Ms Dowey said: “Healthcare here [is a big issue].

“Ayr’s got an elderly population. People are concerned that they can’t get access to a GP, they have to travel further if they're needing treatment.

“A lot of the a lot of the clinics have been moved from Ayr, whether it be centralized up to Glasgow, or some of them getting moved across Crosshouse [in Kilmarnock]. So again, it's keeping services local.”

She added: “[Carrickglen] is another promise that wasn’t delivered.”

“It's still sitting there empty. It's not treated one patient.

“They've taken what was an operational, private hospital, bought it, and now it does nothing.”

But Ms Brown said: “There was an announcement back in 2022, and that was prior to the economy crashing and the Scottish Government not getting any capital investment, which is why that project's been paused.

“It's not wasting money, but it's just when it was first announced, we didn't envisage what happened with Liz truss and inflation and everything that's happened since, and specifically the capital budget being impacted in the Barnett consequentials as well.”

Reform UK was approached regarding an interview with candidate Andrew Fleming Russell.