These are tough occasions to be a Scottish Conservative. To be honest, that’s not an uncommon state of affairs. However 2025 would appear to current a very thorny problem.
There are a great few causes for this. One could be seen within the relative invisibility of the occasion over latest months. This isn’t as a result of an absence of effort on the a part of its new chief Russell Findlay. He’s an ready parliamentary performer, an brisk campaigner, and makes a strong and constant argument for “frequent sense” conservatism, albeit with most of the particulars but to be stuffed in. However that isn’t sufficient.
Findlay’s drawback is that there’s solely room for therefore many narratives in politics directly. Throughout the 2000s, the UK Tories struggled to get a look-in not simply due to New Labour’s political dominance and tactical acuity, however as a result of the TB-GBs had been a way more compelling and important contest than the one between authorities and opposition.
In Scotland as we speak, the Conservatives, sadly for them, are one of many least attention-grabbing tales. Because the events gear up for the 2026 Holyrood election, focus is inevitably turning to the SNP-Labour head-to-head.
The return of the Nats to one thing like reputation underneath John Swinney and Kate Forbes is inflicting Anas Sarwar all kinds of tactical and strategic difficulties. Swinney is displaying an sudden diploma of political nous, setting traps for Labour on welfare points such because the two-child profit cap and the winter gas allowance. He has stopped banging on about independence, for now at the very least, and is concentrating his hearth on Keir Starmer’s underwhelming administration, which has managed to current the First Minister with some gaping open objectives.
Sarwar’s wager, which for a lot of final 12 months appeared each a wise and successful one, was that pledging to sort out the problems the SNP had for therefore lengthy prevented, similar to boosting financial progress and forcing by public-service reforms, would entice an citizens that after almost 20 years of Nat rule can be firmly within the temper for change. However he has but to set out what that might imply in apply, which suggests his “imaginative and prescient” for the way forward for Scotland can come throughout as little greater than rhetoric. Labour dangers showing palely technocratic fairly than an inspiring government-in-waiting. With Swinney now speaking about financial progress and reform of the NHS, Labour is instantly working in a extra crowded subject.
If the SNP is at present successful the politics, there’s loads of time for that to vary, and the polls stay intriguingly poised. This high-stakes cat and mouse sport will proceed, which leaves little house for the Tories to be heard.
The second formidable problem dealing with Findlay is on his house turf – the correct, fairly than the left. Reform UK is offering a second narrative which means it’s commanding the column inches and the airtime that may in any other case have belonged to the Conservatives. That is partly as a result of Reform is a brand new story, in Scotland at the very least, and we’re all fascinated by the brand new. Excessive ballot scores, creditable performances in native by-elections, and a better-than-expected displaying in Scotland on the basic election has folks like me scratching their chins – what does it imply? Why is it occurring? How far can an rebel, reactionary motion go in a Scotland that has for therefore lengthy been dominated by the centre left? On the very least, the rise of Nigel Farage and co is instructing Scotland one thing about itself.
This takes us to a different challenge with which Findlay should wrestle: which solution to soar? In a column within the Scotsman this week, the Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser pointedly praised the strategy taken by his former chief Ruth Davidson, who led the Tories to one thing like reputation within the mid-2010s by looking for to enchantment throughout mainstream Scotland. “It’s by having a particular, average, centre-right agenda that the Scottish Conservatives will progress,” he wrote. Voters are “scunnered with the state of politics”, which helps Reform, however the response shouldn’t be “leaning into the Reform agenda, with its simplistic, populist positions on points similar to immigration”.
I’m not a fan of the inner conversations Findlay is having with Fraser, who he beat for the management, and with others. Nevertheless it was arduous to not learn the article as one thing of a warning, whether or not to the boss or to insiders arguing that Reform needs to be bearded by itself territory. It’s actually true you could’t out-Farage Farage, and at the very least controversial that it’s harmful to attempt.
To all of this may be added the decline in salience of the independence challenge. Apart from hardliners on each side, the structure merely isn’t being a lot talked about. Even Davidson will admit {that a} important a part of her success was constructed on offering a staunch defence of the Union at a time when its future was in actual query. With out that keystone political debate, the place the Tories had a transparent, unambiguous place that appealed to Unionists throughout the spectrum, it turns into more durable to realize traction.
After a bruising management contest, Findlay wants all this like a gap within the head. He has sought to unite the occasion behind him and, to be honest, there haven’t been many noises off. Whether or not Fraser’s article quantities to such will develop into clearer within the months forward. However that’s just one drawback amid many.
[See also: Why Farage is turning left]