Scottish Tories struggle to be heard after election skelping

The Herald Scotland

8 hours ago

'We stopped Nicola Sturgeon converting her gender bill into law. And we have watched Labour try government — but Sir Keir Starmer keeps dropping the ball.'
But for all the jibes, the problem facing Mr Findlay's party is that they are struggling to even get on the pitch.
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The party suffered its worst-ever defeat at last year's general election, slumping to just 121 seats UK-wide — a loss of 244.
In Scotland, the scale of the collapse was slightly masked.
Despite a chaotic campaign that saw Douglas Ross alienate members and then quit before polling day, the party managed to hold on to five of its six seats.
Although the Tory vote halved, support for the SNP — the main challengers in each Conservative-held seat — declined even more sharply.
The ghosts of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak continue to haunt the party, while the spectre of Nigel Farage looms ever larger.
The latest projections from Professor Sir John Curtice, based on last month's Survation poll, paint a bleak picture for next year's Holyrood vote.
His modelling has the Tories slumping to fourth place with just 13 MSPs — less than half their current tally of 30.
The SNP would return 58 seats, while Reform UK would leapfrog the Conservatives to become the main opposition on 21.
Labour would win 18 seats, with the LibDems and Greens on 10 and 8 respectively.
Mr Findlay did not shy away from the scale of the challenge, admitting that a huge effort would be needed to even earn the right to be heard.
Yet despite the grim outlook, the party is hopeful.
'You would think we had no right to be as upbeat as we are, but it is the phenomena of the Conservative Party,' said Stephen Kerr, MSP for Central Scotland.
'Against all of the odds, we are feeling genuinely optimistic and positive.'I think we knew that 2024 was going to be terrible. Having taken that skelping, I think people are back to renew the party — and that is the strong statement of both Russell and Kemi's remarks.'
'We are sitting in a much diminished form at Westminster, our worst ever election result in over 250 years of the Conservative Party really being in existence. And really beginning the fightback,' shadow Scottish secretary Andrew Bowie told Unspun Live, The Herald's politics podcast.
'And that is where we are right now — beginning that long, hard slog of regaining the trust of the British people, hopefully with a view to getting back into power in short order in four years' time.'
Mr Findlay has settled into the role of party leader. He is much more relaxed and less like the deer trapped in the headlights he resembled when he took over from Douglas Ross last September.
He is putting the effort in. One Tory staffer said the boss had rehearsed his 42-minute address at least eight times before delivering it to party members on Saturday lunchtime.
It was an unashamedly Conservative speech with a raft of policies rooted in the party's traditional values: tax cuts funded by £650 million in savings from slashing quangos and civil service jobs; scrapping the SNP's 2045 net zero target; and a pledge to train more Scottish medical students to reduce NHS reliance on immigration.
For years, Scottish Tory speeches at conference have been dominated by saying no to indyref2. That was in Mr Findlay's speech, of course — but it was his programme for government that was to the fore.
'The way we beat Reform is by having good, proper policies in place. We have not seen very much from Reform policy-wise,' North East list MSP Douglas Lumsden told The Herald on Sunday.
'I still think there is enough time [to turn things around]. It is 11 months before the election and this is about building a positive message we can take next year.
'We absolutely need to move on from the past.'
The scale of the party's challenge — and the threat from Reform — was made painfully clear earlier this month at the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election, where the Tories came a distant fourth.
In a seat where they had won 17.5% at the last Holyrood election, they only just managed to hold on to their deposit.Meanwhile, Reform took 26% of the vote.
While Labour's surprise win has led to grumblings in the SNP, Mr Lumsden insists the party is united behind Mr Findlay.
'We are 100% behind Russell. There is no briefing at all from anyone. Russell has a brilliant personality and the more people who get to know him the more they like him — so we need to promote Russell.'
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While Mr Findlay's position might be safe, the same cannot be said for Kemi Badenoch. Potential leadership hopefuls are on manoeuvres.
The leader of the opposition delivered her speech on Friday. It was only her second trip to Scotland since becoming leader in November.
'There is a lot of work to be done, a lot of messaging, a lot of renewal — and she has got the runway that Russell and the rest of us do not have,' Mr Kerr said.
'I am not worried about threats to her leadership. She is letting her colleagues get on with it. She is not a leader who is lying awake worrying about a challenge to her leadership,' he added.
'Anybody who is going to contest Kemi or Russell for leadership right now is mad — because the challenges will not change.'
Mr Kerr compared Ms Badenoch to Margaret Thatcher: 'I am old enough to remember our first female leader and the same stuff was being said about her in terms of her role as Leader of the Opposition and her performance and PMQs — and look what happened to her.'
'You know, we have been written off as a party before,' Mr Findlay told The Herald on Sunday.
'There are many people at this conference who have been around for a very long time, and they have seen some pretty dark days.
'And you know what keeps people going? You know that resilience that we all saw in the hall today — it is because we know that what we stand for is right.
'We stand for personal responsibility, lower taxation, fairer taxes for people, integrity and ensuring the very best public services. We want a Scottish Parliament that is entirely focused on delivering for Scotland — not the fringe obsessions of the SNP and Labour.'So we will be fighting for every single vote.'
Murrayfield is used to resilience and fighting talk — it is also, however, no stranger to the wooden spoon, a fate Mr Findlay will be desperae to avoid next May.