First official Scottish Tory leadership bid announced

And so now we have it: the first official contender for the Scottish Conservative leadership contest. Russell Findlay, the party’s current justice spokesperson announced this morning that he was throwing his hat into the ring — after his party’s rather underwhelming general election campaign.

In a lengthy article for the Scottish Daily Mail, Findlay first paid tribute to former leader Ruth Davidson, hailing her leadership for making the party a serious force in Scottish politics. ‘We need to build on that legacy, not tear it down,’ the shadow justice secretary wrote. A little less kind to the party’s more recent approach, however, Findlay went on:

We’ve not been conservative enough… We haven’t given people a positive conservative vision to believe in. The fact is that over recent years the Scottish Conservative Party has been philosophically adrift, defined by our opposition to a dominant and divisive SNP, not by our own vision for Scotland.