Overview
- On Monday Kemi Badenoch published a Mail opinion piece and visited Aberdeen South to say the by‑election is a referendum on the future of North Sea oil and gas and to back Conservative candidate Douglas Lumsden.
- The Scottish Conservatives are urging voters to remove the Energy Profits Levy and lift bans on new licences to attract investment, while presenting Lumsden as a local candidate with two decades of industry experience.
- The SNP and Labour reject the Tory framing and say Conservatives lack credibility on the sector; the race is described by party figures as a knife‑edge two‑horse contest between the Scottish Conservatives and the SNP.
- Campaigners link national policy choices to local harm in Aberdeen, citing job losses, falling house prices and town‑centre decline, though specific claims such as ‘1,000 jobs lost per month’ come from partisan sources and are not independently verified.
- The seat was vacated after Stephen Flynn moved to Holyrood and the by‑election result could send a political signal on UK energy policy, but any immediate change to taxes or licensing would depend on national government decisions rather than the single vote.