Tom Gordon
UKIP's only Scottish MEP has gone back on a pledge to stand against Alex Salmond in the general election, it emerged yesterday, after the party unveiled its candidate list for May 7.
David Coburn said as recently as December that he would challenge Salmond in Gordon, and that Ukip would "throw a lot of resources" at the constituency "to knock out this big beast".
"The man's arrogance in assuming Scottish voters will put him where he wants means we have a very good chance of beating him," Coburn boasted.
However at Ukip's Scottish election launch in Glasgow, the Gordon candidate was revealed as Aberdeen nurse Emily Santos instead.
Coburn also said last year that he might stand against Scotland's only Tory MP, David Mundell.
However Ukip Scottish regional organiser Kevin Newton will be the candidate in Mundell's Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale seat.
Coburn, 56, a London antiques dealer whose election was the surprise of last May's European poll in Scotland, will stand in Falkirk.
Santos described the contest in Gordon, which the former First Minister is expected to take easily from the LibDems, as "a challenge".
Coburn said of Santos: "She doesn't claim to be political expert but she knows her subject, she's upset about the health service.
"She may very well knock him out, she may stop him getting elected, that's our objective."
An SNP spokesman said: "Ukip have virtually disappeared in Scotland, amid a chaotic catalogue of mutual recrimination and expulsion, and candidates with extreme views.
"David Coburn fits exactly into that category - he obviously knew he was going to get short shrift from the people of North East Scotland, which is why he has run scared."
The launch was also hit by technical problems, with the main event - a message from leader Nigel Farage via videolink - abandoned.
The anti-immigration party is standing in 40 of Scotland's 59 seats on a pro-fracking, pro-coal platform of "re-industrialisation" and an end to renewable and nuclear energy subsidies.
Coburn said: "We intend to get as many seats as we can, it's difficult to say how many. People want change, they're fed up of the same old, same old. They're turning to Ukip in droves."
Referring to his contest in Falkirk, where disgraced ex-Labour MP Eric Joyce is standing down, Coburn said local people had "had an MP who spends much of his time fighting in pubs and bars and the House of Commons, and I think they deserve better than that.
Scottish chairman Arthur Misty Thackeray, who will stand in Glasgow East, currently held by shadow Scottish Secretary Margaret Curran, said he wanted to "end Scotland's two-party state".
Curran responded: "Scotland doesn't want the type of politics on offer from Ukip."
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