Scottish Tory leadership race: runners and riders

While contenders in the UK Tory leadership race ramp up their campaigns, north of the border the Scottish Conservative contest is just about to get started. Nominations for candidates to succeed outgoing leader Douglas Ross close on the 22 August at 12pm. Each leadership hopeful will need 100 party members to back them in order to formally stand before voting takes place next month – with the winner to be announced on 27 September. Initially six candidates declared they would run for the top job, however just before nominations closed, ex-athlete Brian Whittle announced he would, er, no longer run – and has now endorsed Murdo Fraser, alongside two other former leadership candidates Jamie Greene and Liam Kerr. With the race whittle-ing down to just three candidates, here is a list of Steerpike’s MSP runners and riders…

Russell Findlay (8): a former investigative journalist, the party’s current justice spokesperson was the first to announce his candidacy in a length piece in the Scottish Daily Mail. Findlay insists the party needs a ‘common-sense conservative approach’ and is running under the slogan ‘leadership for change’. Lord Offord and Andrew Bowie MP have both expressed their support for Findlay, alongside a number of MSPs…

Meghan Gallacher (2): currently the deputy leader of the party, Gallacher has been Ross’s second-in-command since 2022. She has called for a party ‘reset’, and says that she wants to build a ‘modern, centre right party’ focusing on the right to buy a home and improving support for pensioners and parents. Gallacher is running with the campaign slogan: ‘Reset. Rebuild. Restore.’

Roz McCall MSP
Jeremy Balfour MSP

Murdo Fraser (8): the business, tourism and economic growth spokesperson has written a lengthy piece for the Scotsman in which he slams both Ross and Boris Johnson – and tells his party membership ‘you have been let down’. Fraser says that he will not, as he once suggested, separate the Scottish group from the UK party – but has been accused of ‘pulling the wool’ over the memberships’s eyes over a proposed commission that would look at changing the Tory party in Scotland. So far he has received public backing from the founder of ConservativeHome, Tim Montgomerie, Tory donor Hamish Mair and deputy speaker in the House of Lords, Ian Duncan.