Russell Findlay has launched his bid to be the next Scottish Tory leader as the party descends into a civil war over the propriety of the electoral process. The UK Conservative leadership race has thus far been a pretty staid affair. Not so the Scottish party, which is on the hunt for a new figurehead now that Douglas Ross is returning to the backbenches.
That’s not soon enough for some of his colleagues. He was already in the dog house after Aberdeenshire North and Moray East MP David Duguid was deselected by party HQ and his candidacy given to Ross. What’s worse, Duguid, a gentlemanly champion of oil workers and the fishing industry, was in hospital recovering from illness at the time. They don’t approve of that sort of thing up that way and enough local Tories revolted to see Ross lose on election night.
Now there are reports that he tried the same thing last summer in the neighbouring seat of Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey. The local candidate claims Ross tried to get her to stand aside but she refused. It’s claim that during their meeting he expressed a preference for being replaced as leader by Russell Findlay, the Scottish Tory home affairs spokesperson. Findlay, who says this is all news to him, is seen as the man to beat and his opponents have seized on the Ross row to demand a pause in the contest. The deputy leader, also standing for the top job, has quit in protest.
It was against this messy backdrop that Findlay launched his campaign at the Glasgow Science Centre this afternoon. His pitch was broadly centre-right and while this might sound unremarkable in a Tory internal election, it is out of step with much of the Scottish Conservative MSP group, which is firmly to the left of the Tories at Westminster. Findlay is a former crime correspondent who made a name for himself exposing Glasgow’s notorious underworld. For his troubles, he was subjected to an acid attack on his doorstep one Christmas and pounced on by an armed assailant.
He was elected to Holyrood in 2021 but instantly stood out in the heavily left-leaning parliament for his bang-em-up approach to crime and outspoken opposition to Nicola Sturgeon’s gender reforms, which would have required the law to recognise as a woman any man claiming to be one. Findlay alluded to the issue in his speech today when he said: ‘I want to make sure women’s rights are never eroded.’ He also identified protection of ‘the precious right to freedom of speech’ as one of his priorities. He said the party had ‘lost the Ruth Davidson mojo’. Baroness Davidson, as she now is, led the party between 2011 and 2019 and returned its fortunes to where they stood during the early years of Margaret Thatcher.
Findlay rejected any split from the UK party. His main rival Murdo Fraser previously proposed scrapping the Scottish Conservatives and starting a new party called The Caledonians, that would be independent of the Conservative Party and more outwardly Scottish. This time Fraser has pledged to be ‘active in promoting Scottish interests, not fearing to challenge Westminster colleagues if that were necessary’. Today Findlay characterised any breakaway from the Conservative party as ‘separation’, the Tories’ preferred term for Scottish independence. He also said the party had to move on from simply opposing the SNP’s constitutional ambitions and give people a reason to vote Tory.
That reason, as he sees it, involves helping young couples get on the housing ladder, a return to ‘traditional teaching’ in schools, and an array of tax cuts to stimulate growth. He called this ‘a proper Conservative vision for Scotland’ in which hard work pays off and success is celebrated rather than ‘frowned upon by dour-faced SNP and Green politicians’. Under him, the Scottish Tories would speak for ‘mainstream Scotland’, not the ‘fringe obsessions and right-on causes’ of Holyrood and ‘Scotland’s out-of-touch political establishment’. His watchwords would be ‘freedom, tolerance and respect for the rule of law’ and he even repeated a line from Mrs Thatcher’s 1983 conference speech: ‘There is no such thing as public money; there is only taxpayers’ money.’
Findlay pledged to be ‘a fighter’ as leader and gave a glimpse of a more bullish Scottish Tory leadership, quipping: ‘I went from shining a light on the murky world of organised crime to doing much the same thing today. Though I would say the SNP aren’t all that organised.’ The line went down well in the room, more so than his refusal to be drawn when a reporter from a left-leaning red-top asked if he’d ever taken Class A drugs. They should be available on prescription for those of us tasked with covering this leadership race but Findlay will have to come up with a better answer. In challenging the centre-left consensus inside the Scottish Tories and Scottish politics in general, he has placed a target on his back.
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