Edinburgh People

Our immediate objective is to elect eight members of the general public to Holyrood Parliament in May 2026. One from each region of Scotland to represent the interests of the people from each region and to hold the other MSPs & the Government to account.

Our Party Slogan is:

Do not elect career politicians again! Elect people!

Let’s set aside party-political differences! Let’s come together! Let’s fix politics!

The reason this petition is so important is so far well over 80% of people agree with the objective of the petition. As such the petition will become a vehicle to bring thousands of people together and in due course it will bring millions of people together.

The petition is asking our current elected representatives from the current established political parties to:

• stop the block vote and
• stop the party whip.

Before the summer, three of us will create 60 new regional political parties one for each region of the UK. This petition will be featured on the 60 websites for each of the 60 parties.

So, you can be from anywhere in the UK and you can sign this petition right now on the EDINBURGH PEOPLE website. As soon as your local people party’s website is ready, we will inform you by email and SMS and you will be added to your local petition which will be sent to your Councillors, MP & MSPs if you are in Scotland.

Of course, we will ask you to inform everyone you know that there is a new People Party to directly represent the people where you live for everyone to locally support and join.

First off, let me give you some hard facts and evidence to support our enthusiasm.

In November 2024 and 10 weeks later in January 2025 I stood in two by-elections. Unusually both in the same Edinburgh ward in Fairmilehead and Colinton. Incredibly, within ten weeks I grew my share of the vote by 79%. For the second by-election 7.9% of those who voted gave me their first or second preference vote. (See P.S. below for figures and link to results online).

The significance is that 7.9% smashes the 6% target we require for one MSP to be elected from the Lothian region to Holyrood Parliament.

During the by-elections the key points that secured me my votes were:

• I explained to people clearly that I believed that I have identified the single lynchpin flaw in the current system of politics which is causing so many millions to be so upset. And,
• I have come up with a potential solution to this flaw. And, if this solution becomes a winner, it will transform politics and make many millions a lot less unhappy. And,
• There is a very realistic opportunity for us to bring this new idea to actual fruition within a year at the May 2026 Scottish Parliament Elections. This opportunity is so unique it only exists in Scotland and New Zealand.

The flaw in the current system of politics is that the parties are all far too large. They’re all trying to control far too many thousands of people. They’re doing it with a top-down control which is becoming more autocratic evidenced by Labour suspending seven MPs within one month of the 2024 general election for voting against the whip when in fact they were voting to abolish the two-child benefit cap which is just a normal labour policy to vote for.

So, the flaw is the whipping of the elected representatives.

In Holyrood we had the Gender Recognition Reform Bill where we had the SNP, the Greens, the Lib Dems and Labour all whipped their MSPs to vote in favour of the legislation. Only for that legislation to then be proven to be unlawful by the UK government and by the Scottish Court of session but only after the SNP spent almost a quarter of a million pounds on legal fees.

How did this error of governance take place under our watch?

It is because of the whipping of the elected representatives.

Now what I like is for people to really understand why the whipping of the elected representatives is the lynchpin flaw.

Imagine the two of us were both working in a factory and we were both lackeys. I have been a lackey. Almost everyone has. Now as a lackey what is your job?

Number one your job is to do as you’re told, and number two is to not ask any questions. So, herein lies the problem.

When our elected representatives are told that they will be told how to vote then that in-itself demotes them to the status of a lackey.

At which point it’s just human nature that kicks in and it would apply to you or I. As a lackey you disengage your intellect from questioning what you are doing because what’s the point why would you what can you change? Nothing!

Is this what we want from our elected representatives? I don’t think so! So that’s the flaw.

My potential solution is to change the structure of political parties.

So instead of having large megalithic parties controlling hundreds of MPs the solution is to create dozens of small parties all over the UK. So, we have started here in Edinburgh with EDINBURGH PEOPLE a small party instead of a large party.

Instead of having a top-down control structure the party has a bottom-up control structure where all the power rests with the members of the party.

For the by-elections the key line on my leaflets that got me most votes was “Elect me and you will be my boss! And I will take instructions on how to vote in the City Chambers directly from the members of the party from within the ward. As soon as there is an agenda for voting I will email it to all the members informing them how I would like to vote and why and they will instruct me on how to vote.”

This potential solution restores Representative Democracy. The constitution of your Local People Party gives you a form of Direct Democracy where people retain direct power over political decisions and cannot be ignored.

A lot of people don’t realise that votes in the Local Council Chambers are often more controlled than the whipping of MPs and MSPs in Westminster and Holyrood. The reason for this is the Block Vote.

Let me explain. Imagine that the two of us were both Labour Councillors and we both felt strongly about voting in a certain way. If together we failed, behind closed doors to persuade the majority of the Labour Councillors to vote how we wanted to vote then both of our votes would be cast in direct opposition to how we wanted to vote. So as Councillors we would not be able to vote how we wanted to vote let alone vote how our electorate would want us to vote. So, you can see that there are two chains of representative democracy that are just broken.

Our solution is to fix this thanks to the constitution of our People Parties and to restore democratic representative power to the people where it belongs.

Hopefully, by now you have decided to sign the petition, and you are considering joining EDINBURGH PEOPLE. People from all over the UK can join EDINBURGH PEOPLE for free to give our project moral support. You can also consider supporting us with a donation. Only those living in Edinburgh will have voting rights.

Sorry this video has been so long, but I am now going to explain the most important part.

I’m sure that part of you is thinking that this project seems quite fanciful.

And yes, normally I would agree! However, the Scottish Parliament elections provide a unique opportunity world-wide which to my knowledge only exists in Scotland and New Zealand.

Ninety-nine-point nine percent of the time with an election it is one person one vote. So, for example, if someone always votes Labour, you would have to persuade them to stop voting Labour before they would consider voting for a new party like EDINBURGH PEOPLE and that would be very hard.

However, with the Scottish Parliament elections, it is one person two votes, and everybody casts two separate votes on two ballot papers and elects up to two MSPs. Unheard of!

This is because the electoral system is a halfway house between first past the post and proportional representation.

The first vote is first past the post for a named constituency MSP. To my mind 80% of what people are doing on polling day is choosing their constituency MSP.

The second vote is on the Regional List which is a list of usually almost 20 political parties. For many the 2^nd vote is a bit of an aside and most people choose the same party or possibly the Greens.

For the Scottish Parliament elections, the name of our party will be changed to LOTHIANS & EDINBURGH PEOPLE, and I am hoping to persuade the members to put me fist on the list.

And we will create very soon seven additional regional parties for Scotland’s eight regions:

CENTRAL SCOTLAND PEOPLE, GLASGOW PEOPLE, HIGHLANDS & ISLANDS PEOPLE, NORTH EAST SCOTLAND PEOPLE, MID SCOTLAND & FIFE PEOPLE, SOUTH SCOTLAND PEOPLE & WEST SCOTLAND PEOPLE.

The message that we will have for the electorate will be very appealing:

Here are eight brand new parties for people to vote for one from each region for the purpose of representing the interests of the people from each region for which they can vote for on the list.

The clincher is that we don’t want to change anything about how people vote for their constituency MSP. So, if they’ve always voted SNP or voted or always voted Labour they can continue to do that.

However, if 6% of Scotland like the idea that Scotland should elect eight members of the general public to Holyrood Parliament as MSPs who will be free to stand up and debate about what they want without the fear of being told how to vote by a top-down autocratic party who will threaten to suspend them from the party and potentially destroy their career.

Moreover, these MSPs will have to stand up and debate about the things that their members locally want them to stand up and debate about.

When it comes to challenging the government and asking the tough questions these MSPs will be able to do that better than the other MSPs who are compromised to varying degrees by having to understandably protect their careers and tow their respective party lines.

So, here’s the thing. What is not to like?

I have explained this in person to well over 2,000 people now and I’m struggling to find many people who don’t like the idea.

We are creating 60 new political parties, and I know you’ll be thinking that we’re being a little bit ambitious. However, the feedback is just incredibly unanimously positive.

It’s about bringing people together locally and this petition will be the vehicle.

There is an important detail about the constitution because we need to avoid divisive issues.

It is party members that propose policy and to avoid division a two-thirds majority in needed for policies to become party policy.

The most divisive issue in Scotland is people’s view on Scottish Independence.

So, it is important to mention that we have a policy on Scottish Independence which was voted on by our members. That policy is for us to not have a policy on Scottish Independence and to effectively be neutral on the subject. This means that we can attract people who are both pro-independence and people who are pro-union.

What we are proposing is ambitious. We are going to attempt to achieve within one year what the Green Party has achieved in three decades.

The reason that it is so important that you sign the petition, and you tell your friends and your family is this.

My prediction is that if we secure 10,000 signatures per region then that will be sufficient for us to secure one MSP per region.

The petition will almost certainly fail to persuade the established political parties to change how they operate. This will mean that in order to achieve the objective of the petition the only way to do that is for the people who have signed the petition to come forward on the 7th of May 2026 and for them to vote for their local people party in the knowledge that they will be able to instruct their elected representative to be just that and to represent them their electorate.

To secure one MSP per region we will need around twenty-five thousand votes per region.

Now if this petition were to go sufficiently viral that we secured twenty thousand or thirty thousand signatures per region then that would almost certainly translate into possibly electing two MSPs per region which would give us a total of sixteen MSPs.

The Green Party has shown us that as a small party they have secured eight MSPs.

The only difference is that we’re going to try and do it within a year.

So please sign the petition, share the petition, subscribe to your local people party, join the party which is free so that everyone can be involved and if you can afford to donate funds then please do.

We all know, you know the appetite for actual real change is huge.

Come on Scotland!

Let’s set aside party-political differences!

Let’s come together!  Let’s fix politics!

For the Scottish Parliament Elections.

In order for us to have an election campaign budget which is comparable to that of the big national parties we need to raise over two million pounds for Scotland’s Eight new People Parties.

Those who would normally send Ten or Twenty pounds need to consider sending one hundred pounds and those who would normally consider sending one hundred pounds need to consider sending One Thousand Pounds.

There are 2.5 million homes in Scotland. As soon as the funding comes in the plan is to distribute an A3 folded version of the petition.

The print cost will be around 5 pence per leaflet and the distribution cost with the Royal Mail around 7 pence per leaflet times 2.5 million equals three hundred thousand pounds.

Distribution of 2.5 million petitions should initially secure five thousand signatures which is only one in 500 homes.

Thereafter, the objective would be to persuade the first 5000 signatories to on average persuade through a cascade of word of mouth a further fifteen people each to sign the petition.

This would secure our target of eighty thousand signatures which I have predicted would result in eight MSPs elected from Scotland’s eight people parties. One per region.

So, to summarise, initially, all we need is for 300 people to step forward with one thousand pounds each. Three hundred thousand pounds would allow us to print and distribute 2.5 million copies of our petition to every home in Scotland. As per my calculations above this would trigger a chain of events which would almost inevitably result in 8 People Party MSPs in Holyrood on the 7th of May 2026.

If you can afford £1000 you must really consider coming forward.

Scotland has been responsible for many inventions.

In my opinion this new structure of representative democracy through small local parties may become Scotland’s most important invention.

Thank you all very much for reading this far.

I really hope that you join us on this exciting journey to change the world.

Which starts here in Scotland, NOW!

Thank you and yours faithfully,

Marc Wilkinson

Party Leader
EDINBURGH PEOPLE
M: +44 7791 843 702
E: [email protected]

P.S. As they say, talk is cheap, meaning it is so easy for people to lie. Especially politicians!

Here are the links to the results of the two by-elections in the Fairlmilehead/Colinton Ward:

14^th November By-election: 7401 valid votes. I secured 173 1^st preference votes and 156 2^nd preference votes. 329/7401 equals 4.4% as a share of the 1^st & 2^nd preference votes.

https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/downloads/file/35966/preference-summary-ward-8

23^rd January By-election: 6223 valid votes. I secured 256 1^st preference votes and 238 2^nd preference votes. 494/6223 equals 7.9% as a share of the 1^st & 2^nd preference votes.

https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/downloads/file/36251/preference-summary-report

So, I grew my vote share by +79% from 4.4% to 7.9%.