The outspoken SNP veteran Kenny MacAskill is planning a return to frontline politics at the next general election.

The former Scottish justice secretary hopes to claim the East Lothian seat lost by the SNP to Labour in 2017. He resigned as an MSP in 2016, two years after he went to the back benches in Nicola Sturgeon’s cabinet reshuffle when she became first minister. His career was closely tied to the fortunes of Ms Sturgeon’s predecessor Alex Salmond, first as a member of the 79 Group that pulled the party to the left in the 1980s and then as a member of Mr Salmond’s cabinet.

He has been a vocal critic of Ms Sturgeon’s administration, publicly calling for her husband, Peter Murrell, to