AS 2024 approaches each of Scotland’s main political parties are finalising their lists of preferred candidates for next year’s UK election. Here, we run a light-hearted  rule over some of the rising stars of Scottish politics who are set to test the limits of our understanding.

Jamie Thump (He/Him)

The 18-year-old policy analyst and researcher at SNP party headquarters won employee of the year 2023 for carrying Humza Yousaf's briefcase above and beyond the call of duty. He first came to prominence when he won an essay competition on the theme Public Health is Good for Everyone.

His dad, Farquhar, owns the well-known sustainable boiler installation firm, Thump’s Pumps which provided £1m to sponsor Michael Russell’s ill-fated Yes Winnebago.

Jamie’s policy paper on installing CCTV in every home to detect unhealthy food choices and cutting out hate crime is regarded by party insiders as a visionary template for what an independent Scotland will look like.

Taking to the stage at last year’s party conference he took out his guitar and hummed the Skye Boat Song before urging everyone to turn to the person on their left and say “something pure Scottish to them”. When it resulted in two million TikTok hits, Mr Yousaf approached him about becoming a candidate.

Adler D Fertile III

Mr Fertile (28) is expected to become a candidate for the Scottish Tories at the UK General Election. He has been a policy analyst for the party after moving very suddenly to Scotland from upstate Manhattan where his family’s law firm have close connections to Hunter Biden’s hedge fund operation.

Mr Fertile helped edit the Harvard Policy Forum, a self-funded campus newspaper which advocated for Senator Joe McCarthy’s subcommittee on investigations to be re-constituted owing to what he regarded as an upsurge in un-American activities. He claimed this was the result of a deep moral malaise fuelled by Frasier repeats and avant garde Catholicism.

He also led a raid on the Harvard philatelic society’s meeting rooms, suspecting that rare Russian stamps from the Soviet era were being used as code for a Russian spy-ring. He is married to Annabelle Dennis-Setterington of the well-known Borders wine company.

Spike (He/Him)

Mr Spike, a long time Scottish Greens activist has been groomed for stardom since he was 16 after he caught the eye of party chiefs at the 2015 midsummer sabbat atop Calton Hill on Walpurgis Night.

He came to prominence at the Cop26 conference in Glasgow in 2021 where he had pitched a teepee on the banks of the Clyde opposite the conference centre.

Controversially, he was arrested on suspicion of intent to supply Class B drugs which he’d claimed were organic produce grown on his family’s orchard in South Devon. However, he escaped with a caution when it was discovered that they held nothing of any substance: legal or illegal.

Living off the grid in a cave behind a waterfall in the Campsies he renounced his family surname, Smythe-Fondue, deeming it to be “the remnant of an odious and outmoded social construct denying him full spiritual autonomy”.

Mr Spike’s opportunity to represent the Scottish Greens at Holyrood comes after the party announced that future candidate selection will be determined by means of a conference karaoke competition at which he has excelled in recent years.

In 2014 he co-authored a pamphlet with (he claimed) his goat spirit guide called No Roads? No Bother! which argued the case for destroying Scotland’s road infrastructure as the first step to getting people out of their cars to save the planet and cut down on petrol bills.

Ben Gormley

The 48-year-old Scots academic was a founding member of Tony Blair’s New Labour think-tank Empathy Stupid! and is on the board of directors of the former Labour PM’s Middle East policy initiative All Kinds of Everything.

His seminal policy work Being Meaningful and Meaning it! is said to have inspired Sir Keir Starmer. He is reported to be a close confidante of the UK Labour leader and made the short-list of candidates being considered to act as Godfather to Sir Keir’s son, coming third-top in the focus group set up for the purpose.

He is professor of Applied Diversity at Heriot Watt and is visiting Professor of Kindness at Strathclyde University.

In the 2014 referendum on independence, he authored an essay for The Daily Telegraph which claimed that independence would lead to World War Three.

He claimed to have seen secret Chinese strategy documents targeting an independent Scotland as a base for its nuclear submarines when Trident was moved out of the Clyde Naval Base. And that Beijing spies were already operating in Scotland covertly under the guise of scientists advising Edinburgh Zoo on mating procedures for the giant pandas Sunshine and Sweetie.

Jock Mendelsson

The 52-year-old Scottish Lib-Dem hopeful is a career policy advisor who has worked with the SNP, Scottish Labour, the Scottish Tories and The Scottish Greens. He has stood as a candidate at the last four UK and Scottish elections for each of these parties, believing that they all have much in common and that they just need to talk to each other a bit more.

He is currently an associate director of the lobbying firm, Going For the Messages Matters, which advises the Scottish Wholesalers' Consortium. He’s also a visiting professor of Empathy and Meaning Well at Glasgow University’s John Smith Centre.

In a rousing speech last year to the Scottish Lib Dem conference at The Old Signal Box, Leuchars he advocated a “nature’s pruning-fork” approach to assisted dying.

He is currently chair of the Scottish/Ukraine friendship committee; the Scottish Russian Rabbie Burns Committee; the Scottish/Israel We-can-work-it-out committee and the Scottish/Palestine We-need-to-grab-a-coffee soon Foundation.

Annabella Lopez (She/Her)

Ms Lopez (26) has been on the front-line of the campaign for sustainable rabbit-hutches for the last 20 years. She’s had a career-long passion for Yes during which she’s acted in various roles for some of the SNP’s most influential figures.

These include a spell as an intern for Humza Yousaf when he was Health Minister; researcher for Angus Robertson when he was Depute Leader of the SNP; policy analyst for Joe Fitzpatrick when he was at Drugs and Adviser without Portfolio to Michael Matheson at Health.

Her dad, Salvador, owns the well-known Spanish vodka range, Salvador Swally and is a long-time local party donor in North Lanarkshire. He moved there from his native Madrid to be with his future wife, Agnes, a native of Airdrie. According to party insiders, his daughter will eventually get some seat, some day and one way or the other.