Orkney and Shetland.

One rebel vote stands out from Carmichael's otherwise near-perfect party loyalty: in March 2025 he voted against the Tobacco and Vapes Bill at third reading, breaking with Liberal Democrat colleagues who backed the landmark public health legislation. More recently he has sided with the Lords on several Crime and Policing Bill amendments and pushed to retain Lords changes to the English Devolution Bill -- consistent with a 94% rating on Lords scrutiny votes and a 93% rating on parliamentary scrutiny more broadly. His highest-profile sustained campaign is on energy costs: he claims to have raised turbine constraint payments with the Prime Minister immediately after the 2024 election, and a government proposal in March 2026 to tackle those payments has been framed as partial vindication of that lobbying.

At 54% voting participation, Carmichael is well below the Commons average, though remote island constituencies carry a travel burden that context softens. When he does vote, he is a 99.6% party-line voter -- the tobacco rebellion is the exception, not the rule. His stance profile flags strong support for Lords scrutiny, climate action, and criminal justice reform, while he sits notably below his party average on fiscal responsibility and progressive taxation measures. Across 259 parliamentary contributions he focuses most on the economy and jobs, followed by environment, agriculture, and defence -- a spread that maps directly onto Orkney and Shetland's fishing, farming, and coastguard concerns.

Carmichael chairs the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Select Committee, a role that earned him Farmers Weekly's Farming Champion of the Year award in October 2025, with the magazine citing his scrutiny of the Family Farm Tax in particular. Recent news coverage -- 68 articles in 90 days -- skews toward environment and transport stories, with MP-performance pieces carrying the most positive sentiment. His deviations from party average include notably stronger support than fellow Lib Dems for assisted dying access, pension protection, and armed forces welfare.