In 2007, Thompson was elected from the regional list as MSP for the Highlands and Islands. Thompson received some media attention in the aftermath of the 2007 election because he pointed out to the
returning officer that the number of
additional members for each party had been wrongly calculated. The initial calculation would have given
Labour four additional seats and the SNP none, which would have resulted in Labour gaining a
plurality and winning the election. After Thompson challenged this calculation and the figures were correctly calculated, Labour were allocated three seats and the SNP two. This resulted in the SNP gaining a plurality of one seat and enabled them to form the
Scottish Government. In 2011, Thompson was elected for the Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch constituency. In February 2014, he was one of seven SNP MSPs that voted against allowing
same-sex marriage in Scotland. In July 2020, Thompson quit the SNP to set up the Alliance for Independence, a new pro-Scottish independence party to contest the
2021 Scottish Parliament election, predicting the party could win up to 24 seats, and arguing that voting SNP with both constituency and list votes would "achieve nothing." He told
The National he believed the new movement could help create a "supermajority" in Holyrood at the expense of the Tories, Labour and the Lib Dems. In October, the party changed its name to
Action for Independence (AFI) in February 2021 after the
Alliance for Independence was originally rejected by the
Electoral Commission. On 26 March 2021, Thompson stated that AFI would be standing down all of their candidates in order to support the
Alba Party in the 2021 election. He later joined the
Alba Party. ==References==