Peter Wishart (born 9 March 1962) is a Scottish National Party (SNP) politician and musician who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Perth and North Perthshire, formerly North Tayside, since the 2001 general election.
Wishart is currently the SNP Shadow Leader of the House in the House of Commons and the chair of the Scottish Affairs Select Committee. He has previously served as the SNP's Westminster Spokesperson for the Constitution and for Culture and Sport and Chief Whip. He is also a former keyboard player of the Scottish Celtic rock bands Runrig and Big Country.
He is the longest currently-serving Scottish National Party MP, and the second longest–serving of all time after Alex Salmond.
Background
Born in Dunfermline in 1962, Wishart was educated at Queen Anne High School Dunfermline and Moray House College, Edinburgh. Wishart lives in Perth and has one son and enjoys walking in the Perthshire hills. Wishart is a trained community worker and has been a director of the Fast Forward charity that promotes healthy lifestyles for young people. He was a member of the Scotland Against Drugs Campaign Committee and has contributed to many national forums looking at the problem of drugs within Scottish society.
His brother, Alan Wishart is also a musician, and plays bass.
Music
Wishart was, for 15 years, a member of the Scottish group Runrig.
Wishart appeared on Kingfishers Catch Fire Radio Kampala with Clive Parker on the songs Bella and Battle Scars.
Pete Wishart's first major band was Big Country which he joined in the early 1980s, along with his brother Alan. He initially joined during a period when Big Country were a support act for Alice Cooper's tour. The main force behind Big Country was Stuart Adamson, himself from near Dunfermline. Adamson claimed that the early Big Country were thrown off the Alice Cooper tour for "being too weird".
After the departure of Richard Cherns in February 1986, Wishart joined Runrig. Wishart was a performer on seven of Runrig's studio albums, from The Cutter and the Clan (1987), to his last The Stamping Ground (2001). He also appears on several of Runrig's live albums. Wishart's tenure in the band coincided with their sign-up to the Chrysalis Records label, and their most successfully commercial period in the late eighties and early nineties. Wishart was not the only politically minded member of the band - former lead singer Donnie Munro became a Labour Party candidate.
Wishart is a founder member of the parliamentary rock group MP4. The other members are Ian Cawsey (bass guitar and vocals), Greg Knight MP (drums) and Kevin Brennan MP (lead guitar and vocals).
House of Commons
He was first elected to the House of Commons at the 2001 general election, taking John Swinney's old seat of Tayside North. Since arriving at Westminster, he has served as the SNP's Chief Whip, in which role he has pressed the government for greater parliamentary rights, such as better representation on committees, for both the SNP and other minor political parties. He has also campaigned for copyright term extension and is a vice-chair of the All Party Parliamentary Intellectual Property Group.
In 2003, he voted against parliamentary approval for the invasion of Iraq.
In the light of the reduction in the number of Scottish MPs at Westminster, Wishart's former constituency was abolished in a radical boundary revision, and at the 2005 general election; he won the new constituency of Perth and North Perthshire for the SNP with a majority of 1,521 over Douglas Taylor of the Conservatives. The Perth and North Perthshire constituency was created after boundary changes in Scotland and takes in East and Highland Perthshire, the City of Perth and the Carse of Gowrie. Wishart sat on the Scottish Affairs Select Committee.
In November 2010, Wishart suggested that Scottish football referees should declare which club sides they support.
In August 2014 Wishart confidently predicted that Alex Salmond would beat Alistair Darling in a televised debate about Scottish independence, telling journalists that "the slaughter will be worse than the Bannockburn re-enactment”. Salmond quizzed Darling, among other things, about alien invasion, while Darling questioned him about what currency an independent Scotland would use. An exit poll suggested most viewers thought Darling had won the debate and journalists panned Salmond's performance.
In January 2015, Wishart secured and started a debate on the reform of the House of Lords.