IT WAS while watching the telly with her granny that the spark was lit for Joani Reid, she recalls.

“The then prime minister was on, I think it was Boris, and my granny – who is now in her 80s – said that for the first time, she was really very concerned about the future of the country,” explains Joani.

“I have two young kids, and that made me really stop and think. You want opportunities to be greater for the next generation, not fewer.”

Joani, who is standing for Scottish Labour in East Kilbride and Strathaven on July 4, adds: “I’m not my grandfather, I’m not brimming with confidence that I can change the whole world, but I was looking at the leader of our country and thinking - I could do a better job than that.”

(Image: Gordon Terris/Newsquest)

Joani’s late grandfather is Jimmy Reid, the great Govan-born trades union activist, journalist and eloquent orator who rose to international prominence during the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in of the early 70s.

Growing up on the Southside of Glasgow, Joani (she is named after her beloved gran, Joan, although the extra ‘i’ is the result of a teenage decision to make her name sound ‘cooler’) says her grandfather was a big influence in her life.

(Image: Newsquest)

“I grew up around politics - not party politics as such, but discussions around what needed to be done to make the country better, how institutions should be organised for the benefit of everyone,” she explains.

 “There was talk about the fact that yes, you can help out in your community, but if you seriously want to change lives in a big way, the only way to do it is through politics.”

Joani adds: “My grandfather was an intellectual giant. He could have done anything he wanted, but he chose politics, because that’s how you make change.”

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Joani studied politics and philosophy at Glasgow University, then moved to London to do a Masters degree in public policy and management. She became a councillor in Lewisham, working as part of the cabinet on safer communities, tackling a range of issues including violence against women and girls and knife crime.

“It was a tough beat, in one of the most deprived burghs, very diverse, with more than 50 languages spoken,” she agrees.

“But the problems facing people in Lewisham after 14 years of austerity are the same as the problems facing people in East Kilbride.

“On the doorsteps, people are telling me they are having to remortgage their homes and they are terrified, or they’re using their life savings to pay for an operation."

She explains: “In East Kilbride in particular, they are concerned about the state of the town centre, and the lack of jobs. There has been no strategy here regarding manufacturing.

“We’re not going to just click our fingers and take the town back to the way it used to be but there has to be a plan to grow the local economy, to bring jobs. If I’m elected, I’d want to get that done.”

(Image: Gordon Terris/Newsquest)

Joani moved back to Scotland two years ago, with her husband and two children, aged two and four, and they settled in East Kilbride.

Becoming an MP will mean “huge change” in their lives, Joani acknowledges, and already, online abuse from cowardly keyboard warriors has taken its toll.

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“Politics is an incredibly toxic environment,” she says, bluntly. “And this is the country of the Scottish Enlightenment, of the Red Clydesiders, of intellectual giants?

“I’m called a red Tory, a traitor who has been parachuted in, and is riding on the coat-tails of my dead grandfather..it happens every single day. I was really upset the first time, but you get used to it.”

There is a flash of anger in her eyes as she adds: “The worst thing is it is upsetting my granny, who has to hear that said about her granddaughter, about her husband.”

She pauses. “I think he’d be saddened, too, more than anything, to see what the level of debate has become.”

Joani adds: “But I cheer myself up by going out on the doorsteps. Everyone has been fantastic.”

The other seven candidates standing in East Kilbride and Strathaven are Grant Costello (SNP), Ross Lambie (Conservative), Donald MacKay (UKIP), Ann McGuinness (Scottish Greens), David Mills (Reform UK), Aisha Mir (Liberal Democrats), David Richardson (Scottish Family Party).