Monday February 23rd 2026
Christine Graham MSP
Christine Grahame MSP writes her monthly column for Midlothian View
As this session of Parliament winds down for the forthcoming election , and I cease to be an MSP, along with colleagues on March 27th, I am required to empty my office there.
That is quite a task having accrued so much stuff over 27 years. It is almost, but not quite, as stressful as moving house. Cases have to be concluded, and I have chaired my very last X-Party Group on animal welfare. I was given by the group a lovely bottle of malt, beautiful flowers and best of all, a card signed by so many members and organisations. Work of course continues and the government has had us sitting very late to push through its legislation.
I’ll be frank, sitting till 10pm to be in the next day for a 9am meeting is not my cup of tea but there you go. I look back on all this time representing the Borders and Midlothian and when I am asked what I consider my best achievement without hesitation I say the return of the Borders Railway. I didn’t do it alone, by no means, but was another voice, another campaigner determined that it should be rebuilt.
Going back to that beginning, in early 2000 I set up in Parliament the X-Party group for the Borders Railway and as a member of the Public Petitions Committee at the time was another voice hearing that 17,000 petition and then attending the meeting by that committee in the Volunteer Hall. 250 folk attended. The rest as they say is history.
Today we have young folk travelling on the train who have known nothing else. I still get a thrill journeying on it. Remembering that first journey when the crowds cheered, waved saltires as we passed them and a horseman raced the train in the fields at Heriot.
There were more than a few hiccups in those early days: stations being bypassed, trains delayed due to signal failures. More than once did I find the train bypassing Newtongrange where my car was parked! Timetables not always go smoothly but in the main, it’s just grand and one day, that Borders/ Midlothian train will cross the Border bringing Newtongrange and Gorebridge to Carlisle and England.
Today station car parks in Newtongrange and Gorebridge are jam packed. I have hopes that the stationhouse at Gorebridge will be developed and am working on some plans for that with others. Both towns have exploded in population and that was part of the basis upon which the railway returned. Penicuik, also with a growing population needs better connectivity, perhaps extending the Edinburgh tram system but that will be for my successor to pursue. It certainly would be less of an upheaval than a railway line.
The Sheriffhall roundabout is unfinished business though I am pursuing with Transport Scotland an extended lane travelling northwards. Someone has already put tarmac on the “unofficial” lane on the verge.
Yes there’s lots I could still get my teeth into but I have no doubt my successor will pick up the reins. I certainly leave “to dos” for them in their in-box.
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