Caithness, Sutherland & Easter Ross.

Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross is the largest constituency on the British mainland, a sweep of the far north stretching from the Caithness coast across the Sutherland hills to the firths of Easter Ross. It is rural and thinly populated -- roughly 96,000 people spread across more than eleven thousand square kilometres -- and skews older, with a median age of 49 against a younger national figure. No single town dominates; the seat is a network of small coastal and inland settlements anchored on places such as Thurso, Wick, Tain and Dingwall rather than one centre. Every local service is run by Highland Council, a single Scottish unitary authority, with eight of its wards falling inside the seat.

That council map is unusually independent-minded. Across the most recent ward contests, independents have taken the largest share of seats, with the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party each running close behind and the Conservatives a distant fourth -- a pattern that points to candidate and locality counting for more than party label. Turnouts in the 2022 cycle sat in the broad range typical of rural Highland wards. At Westminster the Liberal Democrats hold the seat: in 2024 they won just under half the vote against the SNP on a little over a quarter, a comfortable margin that widened sharply from the near dead heat of 2019. The sitting MP, Jamie Stone, has represented it since 2017.

On the figures available, the seat looks settled rather than contested, the 2024 result having converted a once-marginal Liberal Democrat hold into a clear lead. Recent local coverage has had a broadly administrative tenor, dominated by Highland Council investment and infrastructure plans rather than political conflict, with attention on long-term civic and education provision in the larger towns. The independent strength in the wards is the chief caveat: it keeps council politics fluid even where the parliamentary position has firmed.