SNP MSP Maguire announces she is now cancer-free
SNP MSP Ruth Maguire has announced she is cancer-free and is preparing to return to Holyrood.
The Cunninghame South MSP had said last year that she would not seek re-election at the 2026 Scottish Parliament election after she was diagnosed with secondary cervical cancer.
She had initially been diagnosed with cervical cancer in May 2021 and returned to Holyrood a year later, but stepped back when her cancer returned.
Speaking to Holyrood Magazine, she revealed her cancer treatment had been successful. PA Media Ruth Maguire has said she will not seek re-election at the 2026 Holyrood election (Jane Barlow/PA) PA Media
She said: 'I have had so many kind messages and cards and people telling me that they've been thinking of me and keeping me in their prayers.
'I've felt so supported and my family and friends have been magnificent, but constituents and community members have been just lovely.
'I'm looking forward to going out and proactively reconnecting with constituents and groups again.'
She added: 'I have a long-standing interest in women's health, in particular with access to healthcare, and having more first-hand experience and talking with patients and staff over the past few months has given me another fresh insight and indeed impetus into work that may be needed in regards to women's health and wellbeing.'
The MSP is set to begin constituency work in the coming weeks and will return to Holyrood after the summer recess.
First elected in 2016, she is the deputy convener of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee and co-convener of the cross-party group on commercial sexual exploitation.
Get all the latest news from around the country Follow STV News
Scan the QR code on your mobile device for all the latest news from around the country
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The National
an hour ago
- The National
Labour are still in deep trouble despite by-election win
FOR a man whose party had just won a by-election, it was widely expected to lose, Anas Sarwar is not at all a happy bunny. His aggressive and angrily needy behaviour while being interviewed by Martin Geissler on the BBC Scotland Sunday Show will remind fans of RuPaul's Drag Race of the iconic droll comment made by contestant Trixie Mattell when a competitor had a very public and furious temper tantrum after being put through to the next round by the judges but failing to make the top three: "I think that's a lot of emotion for safe." For those not familiar with the show, the comment was a pointed reference to the fact that although the contestant in question had survived that particular episode, the temper tantrum was due to their awareness that they were not on track to win the contest, and as it transpired, they were eliminated not long afterwards. Likewise, the anger displayed by Anas Sarwar was due to his awareness that despite this by-election win, his party remains in deep, deep, trouble, and that trouble is largely of Labour's own creation. Whatever you might think of the SNP's decision to focus its attacks on Reform UK during the by election campaign - and spoiler alert I think it was tactically a disaster - it's pretty rich of Anas Sarwar to go on the BBC, of all media platforms, and accuse John Swinney of running a "dishonest and disgraceful" campaign which pushed voters to Reform UK. Rarely has psychological projection been so manifest in a political interview. READ MORE: Scotland's top doctor warns of climate and pollution public health emergency It doesn't push voters to Reform when you do as the SNP has done and complain loudly that Reform is running an overtly racist campaign. What pushes voters to Reform is when you do what the Labour party and the BBC have been doing, which is to ape Reform's policies, thus legitimising and mainstreaming them, and to give Reform's leader a platform out of all proportion to his political success. The rise of Reform has nothing to do with the SNP, and everything to do with the Labour and Conservative parties and the anti-independence British media, above all the BBC. Of course, Anas Sarwar knows that, he's not a stupid man. He is, however, a politically dishonest man. The very last thing he can do in public is to admit the responsibility of his own party or that of a publicly owned broadcaster to which his party is linked by an umbilical cord in facilitating , encouraging and normalising racist far-right Anglo-British nationalism. Blaming far-right Anglo-British nationalism on the SNP is a new low, even by the base standards of the Labour Party in Scotland. Talking of pandering to the far right, the BBC has revealed that it has drawn up plans to "regain the trust" of Reform UK voters. The plans reportedly include changing news and drama content in order to make the broadcaster's output more appealing to the kind of people who have no problem at all with Doctor Who being a shape shifting near immortal alien who can cross time and space while fighting all sorts of trans-dimensional alien threats and sentient dinosaurs, but who complain it becomes unbelievable when the Doctor regenerates into a woman or a gay black Scotsman. Minutes of a meeting of the BBC's Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee in March, which has been seen by Byline Times, show that BBC News CEO Deborah Turness gave a presentation in which she discussed plans to alter 'story selection' and 'other types of output, such as drama' in order to win back the trust of Reform voters. One of the key members of the BBC's Editorial Guidelines Committee is former GB News executive Robbie Gibb, an arch-Brextremist who was appointed to the board by Boris Johnson in 2021. In 2022, former BBC presenter Emily Maitlis described Gibb as an 'active agent of the Conservative party.' Gibb was Theresa May's Downing Street Director of Communications between 2017 and 2019. (Image: House of Lords) Expect more news reports on immigration and greater prominence given to uncritical coverage of Reform UK politicians. They should just go the whole hog and rebrand BBC Question Time as 'An Evening with Nigel Farage'. Gibb was also previously the director of The Jewish Chronicle. Gibb fronted a consortium of worthies who 'rescued' the paper in 2020, but who claim either not to know, or are not saying, who put up the cash. In his November 2023 BBC Declaration of Personal Interests, Gibb stated that he was the 100 per cent owner of the Jewish Chronicle. After Gibbs' departure in August 2024, the newspaper was forced to apologise for publishing a series of fabricated pro-Israeli stories about the Gaza war. In drama, you can now look forward to cosy murders set in English country villages where everyone is white and heterosexual, and period dramas about a plucky colonial doctor, who repeatedly references how Scottish he is despite his upper class English accent, serving in one of the British Empire's African possessions, where over the course of a six episode story arc he rescues the benighted natives from their pagan superstitions and Arab slave raiders and eventually succeeds in winning the heart of a beautiful English rose, the daughter of a wealthy duke who heads a household of forelock tugging salt of the earth servants. I should stop here in case the BBC thinks this is a story pitch. Compare and contrast, surveys have shown that the BBC has lost most public trust in Scotland, in no small measure due to the Corporation's blatantly one-sided coverage of Scotland's constitutional debate, but the BBC shows no interest in trying to win back the trust of Scotland's independence-supporting viewers and listeners. The reason for that is that, despite his constant claims to be 'anti-elite,' Farage and his ilk pose no threat at all to the British establishment, they are merely the latest iteration of that establishment's attempts to subvert and control impulses to push back against it.
The National
an hour ago
- The National
Groundhog Day as John Swinney tries to justify SNP's failed strategy
Trying to claim defeat in Hamilton as some sort of improvement from the disastrous Westminster election defeat is beyond parody. John Swinney was all over the by-election in Hamilton – he has to take the blame for ignoring the campaign wishes of the local SNP members, and focusing instead on Reform while letting Labour slip through the middle. READ MORE: Activists question John Swinney's independence strategy after by-election loss Let's be clear: Labour had a rubbish candidate and campaign but still out-polled the SNP. Yet again support for independence far outstrips support for the SNP – why? Is it because everyone can see that under Swinney there is no hope for independence with the SNP? Even former MSP/ MP/leadership lackey Anne McLaughlin is claiming online that the SNP can't campaign on independence as the party has no plan on how to achieve it! That should wake up SNP members that this party is going nowhere under Swinney. We are getting a repeat performance of his last failed attempt at leadership. Swinney hasn't learnt the lessons of why he lost in 2003 – so I don't hold out much hope of any review of this latest by-election failure. Until Swinney – or a capable leader – brings forward plans for independence then the SNP is just another centrist party like any of the London-led parties. It's time for a real change in the SNP, not a retread of Swinney's tired old campaigning nonsense. Alex Beckett Paisley DIDN'T Stan Grodynski nail it on the head (Letters, Jun 8)? My only reservation is that I have scant faith this SNP party leadership will heed his message. I hope I'm wrong, because there's still time to kick the necessary action into gear before the 2026 election, which really is the party's last-chance saloon. But we'd need to see the Scottish Government attacking Westminster policy where it acts against Scottish interests. We'd need to see the blame for perceived policy failures in Scotland laid at Westminster's door, where real responsibility lies. Remember that we are where we are after more than 300 years of English rule, not just the 18 years of SNP government that Starmer likes to ram down our throats at PMQs in protection of his establishment exploiting us. READ MORE: Do the SNP no longer have a strategy for gaining independence? We'd need to show the funding limitations of the Barnett formula, which leave us having having to make choices between rather than for Scotland's needs. We'd need to trumpet the party's success areas and remind Scottish voters of the many benefits the party has delivered in their years of government, which are limited by devolution. And we'd need to highly the many areas on which we differ in cultural and political outlook: weapons of mass destruction, nuclear power, the EU, supporting genocide in Gaza, global trade, human rights, immigration, poverty, drugs, equality of opportunity, and equality generally, ambition for future prosperity, and more. There are so many generally held areas of difference. We need to reinforce that none of the three main right-wing Unionist parties can truly serve the interests of Scots, they merely wish to maintain the Union's exploitation of us. READ MORE: What is the rationale behind the SNP's 'wheesht about indy' stance? We need to attack the Union status quo with a vengeance, diligently all the way to the 2026 election. The SNP need to engage with the wider movement and make it the irrefutable de facto referendum that the democracy-denying Starmer-led Labour government denies us, in flagrant breach of our fundamental rights as the historic nation we are, and supposedly in partnership within the UK union, rather than the colonised territory that binds us to England's domination. The clock is ticking. Let's hope Stan's party is settling into its starting blocks, the starting gun poised for firing. Let's get the campaign going with that bang! Jim Taylor Scotland I CALLED it in this paper some time ago. 'Lessons will be learned'. This was the cry from the hapless Angus Robertson, soon followed by others. Well, I know someone who has already learned a lesson. ME. I did not think the result would bother me either way, but after thinking on it I came to a sorry conclusion. The SNP have taken away from me my dream of an independent Scotland in my lifetime. Their performance in this week's vote was lacklustre to say the least. How does it feel to lose to an Invisible Man? To me it feels like a betrayal of all I thought the SNP was. Everybody, including the head yins in the SNP, knows the reason for the defeat. It is the same reason we have had to put up with since 2014. No action on independence. READ MORE: SNP must turn support for independence into 'real political action', says Swinney Before you say 'Old John has thrown his toys out of the pram', let me assure you that is not the case. I have thrown the pram away with the toys in it! I have decided that I will not be banging my head against a brick wall any more. I am doing a Mhairi Black and giving politics a miss. Until there is a change of leadership in the SNP and a rock-solid commitment on independence, I am taking a Sabbatical. I am so upset that I feel the very heart and soul have been ripped from me. If all of you out there are happy just to carry on like this, then I am happy for you! We might as well call an election and get it over with because 2026 is not going to be pretty. A Unionist government awaits us in Holyrood. The SNP are quite happy to trundle along and ask us to vote for them at elections. They just want to play nice politics and hope for a referendum being given to us by Westminster. Well, I've had enough of all their weasel words. The SNP have no desire to make any progress on independence. If they had, then the promise of 2026 being a defining moment would have got us over the line on Thursday. But no, more of the same and look where it got us. Humiliated. I would like to thank The National for all the letters of mine that have been printed and wish all of you who support independence good luck. With this lot in charge of the SNP, you are going to need a lot more than luck! I may return one day when things are different, but at my time of life that is unlikely. I have been worn down by a party that was formed on the bedrock of Scottish independence. It is now a very pale imitation of that! Thank you all. Old John Ayrshire
Daily Record
an hour ago
- Daily Record
Hamilton by-election: Contrasting fortunes for parties who didn't win
The SNP are "very disappointed" to lose the seat after 14 years, while third-placed Reform say they are now in contention for constituency as well as list seats at next year's Holyrood election. There were contrasting responses from the runners-up in the Hamilton, Larkhall & Stonehouse by-election – with the SNP admitting they are 'very disappointed' to lose the constituency seat after 14 years, while rising Reform called their performance 'incredible' and say they are now the third party in Scottish politics. Katy Loudon polled 7957 votes for the SNP and Reform candidate Ross Lambie took 7088 votes, with the two South Lanarkshire councillors respectively finishing 602 and 1471 votes behind new MSP Davy Russell of Labour. Both parties now say they are setting their sights on the Scottish Parliament general election in 11 months' time and will learn from voters' views during the seven-week campaign as they seek to make gains in the nationwide 2026 Holyrood vote. Ms Loudon congratulated Mr Russell on his win in the 'wonderful constituency', saying: 'He and I both want the very best for it' and adding: 'While I am obviously disappointed not to win, I am very proud of the SNP campaign. Over the next 11 months we will work harder than ever to secure the trust of people in Hamilton, Larkhall & Stonehouse and right across Scotland. 'This was a very close result – and if Labour think they can take this result as a vote of confidence in the performance of the Westminster government, then they may be in for a real surprise next May.' First Minister John Swinney, who visited the constituency at least weekly during the campaign, also congratulated Mr Russell, saying: 'Representing your constituents in parliament is a huge honour and he will do so with my best wishes' and added that his party 'will take time to consider the result fully'. He said: 'Katy Loudon fought a superb SNP campaign, and clearly I am disappointed that we did not win. Labour won by an absolute landslide in this area less than a year ago – we came much closer [this time] but the people of Hamilton, Larkhall & Stonehouse have made clear that we still have work to do.' Mr Swinney told how party campaigners 'heard a lot of anger about the cost of living', and said: 'Between now and May's election, I and the SNP will set out a vision of hope and optimism. We will show people in Scotland that a better future is possible by taking decisions for ourselves, and that is how we will win in 2026.' He noted the the by-election was called 'in circumstances that nobody wanted' following the death in March of respected constituency MSP Christina McKelvie, and said: 'During this campaign we heard so much from voters about the work that [she] did on their behalf.' Campaign co-ordinator Jamie Hepburn, the Cumbernauld MSP, echoed that view, saying the by-election had taken place 'in very difficult circumstances for us, as a result of the loss of one of our own, much-loved MSP Christina McKelvie'. He told the Hamilton Advertiser that the result was 'obviously very disappointing' and said: 'We've run an assertive ground campaign, speaking to thousands of people in a very short period of time. I'm still proud of the campaign we ran in terms of trying to tackle Reform. They're going to be a presence in Scottish politics – I don't think a positive presence – and the way you deal with them is tackling them head on. 'We know there are people who are scunnered out there and we do understand that; people are struggling with the cost of living right now and we're trying to respond to that [with] the work we're doing to mitigate against the two-child cap, to bring back the Winter Fuel Payment. 'We're also aware of challenges in public services and that's why we're investing record levels of funding in the NHS to make sure that there's an increased capacity of more GP appointments, procedures and operations; and also investing a record amount in local government where we know people rely on the services they deliver. 'We've got to continue to re-engage with the people of Scotland as we move into a very important election next year, and I'm confident that when it gets to the focus of a national election for the Scottish Parliament where people consider who might form the next government, that they will look to the SNP and the leadership of John Swinney and vote for us then.' Reform candidate Mr Lambie says the party's performance in gaining 26 per cent of the vote – which compares to 7.8 per cent in the general election less than a year ago – is 'pretty incredible' and told the Advertiser: 'It's a three-horse race in politics in Scotland now, and the third horse is now Reform, not the Conservatives any longer. 'If we can achieve this in six weeks, imagine what we can achieve in 11 months to the Holyrood election. There's only a few per cent separating us. We were only a few hundred votes away from the SNP here in one of their strongest seats, so if you apply that to Holyrood, that means we're not just contesting list seats, we're actually contesting constituencies around Scotland now. 'That's a game changer, and that's what we've achieved here. When we first started, the aim was to beat the Conservatives, but as the campaign went on we realised how much the Labour vote had dipped and the discontent with the SNP after 18 years is growing and their downward trajectory is carrying on.' He attributed the party's success to 'being honest with the public and calling out all the failures. We understand that people have been in a holding pattern and their lives haven't got better for 10, 15 years, and the established parties didn't understand the urgency. People around the doors want their lives to change quite urgently, so that's why a lot of people went for Reform.' Mr Lambie did not comment when asked about the nature of the election campaign, which included widespread criticism of Reform's social media adverts asserting that Anas Sarwar would 'prioritise the Pakistani community' and cutting to a speech by the Labour leader in which he does not make that statement – with the videos being described as 'blatantly racist' by both Labour and the SNP. The Reform candidate was joined at the count in Hamilton by deputy party leader Richard Tice, making his third visit to the constituency and in which he called their third-place result 'truly remarkable'. He said he was 'thrilled to bits' with Reform's showing and said: 'We've come from nowhere to being in a three-way marginal.' * Don't miss the latest headlines from around Lanarkshire. Sign up to our newsletters here. And did you know Lanarkshire Live is on Facebook? Head on over and give us a like and share!
