Ellie Merton admits she was caught off guard by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s announcement of a General Election on July 4.
But she’s determined to campaign vigorously for votes.
Born and bred in Cambridge, Ellie became politically active as a student and was a secretary in London for 25 years, working in many different industries.
In 2014 she moved into a cottage outside Eyemouth where her mother had lived, although she continued working in London.
However, a cancer diagnosis led to her moving permanently to the region a couple of years later.
Having recovered from cancer she is now attempting to get over the impact of Long Covid, after contracting the virus on three occasions.
She said: “I am still trying to get my health back on track, so when this election was called I had promised myself some time ago that I would stand as an independent candidate, but I probably knew that I really wasn’t really well enough to mount a normal election campaign.”
This is not Ellie’s first election, having stood back in 2015 in the constituency of Walthamstow.
She added: “Necessarily this has been a very different campaign from 2015 when I was racing around the constituency on foot, this time around it’s all being done by car.”
Central to viola-playing Ellie’s manifesto to voters is a pledge to dramatically increase creative industries, arts and humanities education provision.
She wants to establish the Borders as the “go-to” location for UK creatives to live and work, including sustaining creative industries careers, retaining existing and developing new venues and locations for creative output.
Another platform she is standing on is piloting a ground-breaking hedgerow, rivers and coastal economy in the Borders, “revitalising our field and road edges and hedges, creating new habitats and expanding healthy biodiversity”.
She aims to co-ordinate schemes immediately to lift constituents out of “cruelly imposed UK government deprivation, hardship, inadequate housing and foodbank reliance”.
Additionally, she wants pressure put on the British Government to push for the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza and all Palestinian captives held in Israel and to “stop Israel’s genocide in and destruction of Palestine”; assist in Palestinian reconstruction and immediately recognise Palestinian statehood.
She said: “I don’t want my health to get in the way of what I think is a strong candidacy and I’ve put a lot of thought into what my constituents actually need and as a result of my extensive human rights campaigning on the Palestinian issue I already know a lot of people within the Westminster bubble, cross-party, and I have always worked cross-party.
“I’m really frustrated with the Conservative government and I can’t be doing with it any-more and its incompetence and that’s why I’m standing.”
The candidates for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk are: John Lamont (Conservatives), David Wilson (SNP), Ray Georgeson (Liberal Democrats); Caitlin Stott (Labour), Neil Mackinnon (Greens), Carolyn Grant (Reform), Ellie Merton (Independent); Hamish Goldie-Scot (Scottish Family Party).
Mr Lamont has been the constituency’s MP since 2017.