General Election 2024: Reading West and Mid Berkshire Constituency - meet the candidates: Ross Mackinnon, Conservatives
There is just one day left to go until the country goes to the polls in the General Election.
West Berkshire now straddles two constituencies, the new-look Newbury and then the Reading West and Mid Berkshire. Each constituency has seven candidates standing.
Local democracy reporter Niki Hinman has put the same six questions to all of the Newbury candidates and spoken to the Reading West and Mid Berkshire candidates.
We have now turned the spotlight on each candidate who responded and you can find them all online at Newburytoday.
We have worked our way, alphabetically, through the candidate list.
And today we’re talking to Ross Mackinnon.
He is standing as the Conservative candidate for the Reading West and Mid Berkshire seat.
He’s a Rangers fan, lives in Burghfield and is married, with four children aged 16, 14, five and three.
He grew up Uddingston outside Glasgow in a single parent family.
“It was a Lanarkshire mining village,” he explained.
“Can you imagine being a Tory in a mining town in the 80s – there were about four of us!”
So why is he a Tory?
“I always saw the Conservatives as the party of aspiration,” he said.
“If you see someone with a bigger house, for example, then a working class Tory would want it.
“Where as a socialist would say you shouldn’t have it, if that explains it.
“We lived in a flat and then a two up two down with my two other siblings.
“At school - I always did my homework – I was a bit of a girly swat.
“I loved school. I did well in exams. My mum will take a lot of credit when she reads this!”
But his school experience rooted his Conservative values and partly explains his love of Thatcher.
“I went to an independent school, but we didn’t pay fees.
“The Thatcher Government had an assisted places scheme, so mum signed me up for that and I got a place at a top school in Scotland.
“I went to a great school but without that policy in place it would not have been possible.
“The option for a spectacle wearing skinny boy in a very rough school would not have been good.
“In a utopian world, this educational social mobility is something we should work to fix.
“In the real world I wonder how easy it is,” he mused, and clearly has a policy stand on education.
“There has to come a point to be able to remove disruptive children from the education system,” he said.
“The schools should be better and it should be easier for them to have these disruptive pupils removed.”
University of Edinburgh and a law degree followed but London beckoned, so he joined Barclays Bank on a grad scheme, and headed south.
“I have always been interested in politics,” he added “Even supported Mrs T as a teenager.
“But politics was always something I was going to do next week… so I never got involved.
“I joined the party in 2017. Then I got asked to stand as a councillor in West Berkshire, and three months after being elected in Bradfield, I was on the executive committee responsible for finance.”
Track forward and he beat an undisclosed, but considerable, number of candidates to get selected as the candidate for Reading West and Mid Berkshire despite his relative immaturity in politics.
He admits the new seat “could go either way”.
“Both opposition parties do have a chance here,” he said.
“Where does the non-Tory vote go? That’s the interesting thing here.
“There is a decent Tory vote here with Labour in Reading West. The key is getting the Tories to vote. Labour are nowhere in the villages.”
So he’s convinced he will deliver a voice for the people of Reading West and Mid Berkshire.
“I have a sense of public service for the place,” he added.
“I’ve got experience which is useful, to do something for the community and being their voice.
“We are here to represent the people here.
“People need someone who is resilient.”
He said he believes Reform will take votes from the Tories but also from Labour.
“They are basically the Brexit party aren’t they?” he added. “So they are full throttle into immigration.
“We need to avoid dangerous rhetoric here. The British people are incredibly generous and welcoming to refugees.
“Reform are not wrong that illegal immigration should be sorted.
“I have a zero tolerance policy for it.
“The Rwanda scheme will act as a deterrent for people trying to get here illegally.
“It is costing us £7m a day to house these people and it has to stop.
“One of the criticisms is it will cost millions – but once a young man in France thinks he will be sent to Rwanda he won’t get on that boat.”
He is now taking more of a back seat on his occasionally robust social media posts, although maintains he will always defend.
“I am probably one of the most complained about councillors on social media, but I never hit first – I just defend myself or my colleagues.
“I’ve never been bothered about what people have written about me.
“I have had some hideous abuse on social media, but it doesn’t bother me, if someone says we are criminals or faux patriots I will defend it.
“I’m ready to go with an election now.
“Bring it on.”
