|TOP|The Scottish Christian Party confirmed itself as a legitimate contender for a Scottish Parliamentary Seat in Holyrood next year after a good result in the Dunfermline and West Fife bi-election.

The leader of the Scottish Christian Party and candidate in the bi-election, the Rev. James George Hargreave, came sixth in the poll winning 411 of the votes on Monday night.

He commented: “This is a very encouraging result, particularly when you consider the low key campaign that we ran.”

In the run up to the election, the Scottish Christian Party sent out just one letter and an Election Address in addition to delivering copies of the party newspaper.

“Set this against the mountain of paper sent out by the other parties and you can see clearly that the Scottish Christian Party are a party that next year could win a Scottish Parliamentary seat in the Mid Scotland and Fife region,” he said.

The Scottish Christian Party is hoping to reverse the disappointingly low turnout which saw only half of the electorate turn out to vote.

|QUOTE|“There will have been many Christian amongst the non-votes who over the next year we will seek to engage with and win their support,” said Rev. Hargreaves.

There was outrage at the bi-election, however, as Rev. Hargreaves and four other candidates were excluded from the stage at a televised election hustings meeting held on the same night.

While the candidates for the Scottish Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party were ushered on stage to speak on their agenda, the Scottish Christian Party leader was seated in the front row with the audience along with other minority candidates.

The Scottish Christian Party narrowly missed out on beating the Scottish Socialist Party, who took 537 of the votes following a door-to-door campaign, making them the Scottish Christian Party’s principle rivals and target for the coming year.

|AD|After the intervention of Rev. Hargreaves, the audience applauded and carried chairs on stage for the five excluded candidates allowing the hustings to continue with all nine candidates on stage.

William Thompson, co-founder of the Scottish Christian Party noted, “The SSP playing at the top of their game, only achieve 126 votes more than us. Their candidate, John McAllion, was a notable Labour MP. Yet the Scottish Christian Party are nipping at the heels of the SSP and we have just entered the fray. I see no reason why we cannot surpass the SSP when we are up to full speed.”

The Scottish Christian Party also succeeded in beating the UKIP by almost 2 to 1, as well as coming ahead of the Common Good party led by the Rev. Dick Rodgers by around four to 1.

Revd Hargreaves added, “I have spoken with Revd Rodgers and it is my prayer that we can avoid the situation in the future where two Christian ministers are fighting each other at the polls.”