New Labour had their chance. And look at the mess they created.

Five years ago, MacNeil’s election caused widespread comment as the genial, Barra-reared Roman Catholic had triumphed in a seat dominated by a particularly robust Presbyterianism. But he quickly made his mark by a semi-successful campaign against a new Scotland-minimising BBC weathermap and, more notably, in his doughty pursuit of the Blair Government over ‘cash for peerages’, triggering a Mdetropolitan Police investigation and collecting a Spectator award as Backbencher of the Year in the process.

Parallel SNP success in the Western Isles in 2007, the election of an SNP Government in Edinburgh and the generally toiling fate of the Brown administration down south should have bolstered MacNeil’s prospects here for re-election. But he has been badly embarrassed by revelations of inappropriate behaviour with schoolgirls in an Orkney hotel (for which he promptly apologised), some eyebrow raising, and eyebrow-raising claims for Parliamentary expenses (including drink, a Toblerone bar and wellie-boots).

His handling of local issues has also been contentious, most notably some flip-flopping on the hot question of industrial-scale windfarms, rather too studied neutrality on bitter controversy on the imposition of Sunday ferries by Caledonian MacBrayne and the Scottish Government, and the recent threat to the Qinetiq missile-tracking range in the Uists – an important local employer and when some felt MacNeil cared more about its value as an election issue than the vital jobs in what is historically a low-wage economy.

Angus MacNeil, though, is lucky in his opponents: a noisy but lghtweight incomer, Dr Jean Davis, for the Liberal Democrats; a young ‘paper’ candidate for the Conservatives, Sheena Norquay, who has yet to show face in the seat and whose solitary interview featured curious concern for a harbour-wall in what is the Isle of Lewis’s only land-locked village; and (of most moment) the formidable but abrasive Cllr Donald John MacSween for Labour, whose biggest asset is long and noisy involvement in the local council, and whose biggest weakness is long and noisy involvement in the local council.

SNP games over Sabbath ferries have undoubtedly angered many adherents of the local churches and the main unknown is whether they will largely abstain, take a judicial tack and cynically throw their ballots behind MacSween (a long-term advocate of 7-day sailings) or back a local ‘Independent Christian’, island businessman Murdo Murray, who seems set to stand but boasts little relevant experience and no evident election organisation. He has, however, apparently scared off the widely disliked ‘Scottish Christian Party’, one of several right-wing and Europobic Christian Parties headed and bankrolled by the curious Rev. George Hargreaves (who stood here in 2005 whupped the Tories into a distant fifth) , and which made much noise about a renewed bid in 2010.

The biggest threat to MacNeil’s career is, really, none of the above, but the very real prospect of the seat’s abolition in the next decade, probably as part of a wider cull of Scotland’s Westminster representation in exchange for further repatriation of powers from Westminster. Its most likely fate is a shotgun-wedding with the Isle of Skye and a dramatic change in political dynamics.

Prediction: SNP hold, but with a mildly reduced majority and a mildly chastened MacNeil.