The Conservative party conference may be drawing to a close, but the fighting spirit of the Tories isn’t going anywhere. At the Spectator’s well-attended Scotland event this afternoon – ‘Can the Tories turn back the teal tide?’ – MPs Andrew Bowie and Harriet Cross were packing the punches. The story of the Scottish Tories isn’t a negative one, they insisted, despite polling suggesting the next Scottish Parliament election could see them become the fourth party in Holyrood. Oh dear…
But it wasn’t just Reform that was under attack from this punchy panel: shadow Scotland secretary Bowie had some stern words for the Kemi Badenoch detractors in his party. ‘Can I just say to those people who are mouthing off about either leader [Kemi Badenoch or Scotland’s Russell Findlay], that’s not helpful,’ he warned the audience. He went on:
This is a team effort. We all have to be facing the same direction on the pitch. People do not vote for divided parties, so can we just stop with the snide remarks, the backbiting, the leaking, the speculation?
Shots fired! Bowie added:
Get behind our respective leaders, especially Russell when it comes to next May, and let’s go out there and knock it out of the park and demonstrate to the people of Scotland that we do have a radical alternative for how Scotland could be run.
On Reform, Cross gave an impassioned speech that earned her the first ovation of the evening from the audience. The Gordon and Buchan MP was firm that ‘no’, she would not want to see a pact between the Conservatives and Reform. In a veiled swipe at the defectors from the Tory party, she went on:
I do not want to see a pact between the Conservatives and Reform, not least because I don’t know – and I’m sure therefore most of this room and most of the country north and south of the border – do not know what reform we’re offering Scotland, any of these defections from the Conservatives to Reform. I’d love to ask them: why are you defecting? What is it about Reform that’s attracting you? Because I don’t know what they stand for. They don’t know what they stand for. All they know is that they stand for something.
Burn…
Concluding, Cross asked the audience:
Why would we tie ourselves to an organization, a movement, a thought, a hope, a lie that we do not know which way it’s going to go? I do not want to sell my soul to Reform. I do not want Scotland to be in the grips of a party who do not care about Scotland. They just care about getting one man to power.
A lot of fighting talk – but can the Tory group north of the border translate the momentum from conference into votes next May? Stay tuned…
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