Kemi Badenoch has given her backing to Scottish Tory leader Russell Findlay as she said the pair are working to 'rebuild' the party's support. The Conservative leader said the Scottish election, which saw Mr Findlay's party lose a raft of MSPs, was 'always going to be tough' but that their focus remained on challenging the SNP.
From a position of providing the official opposition in the parliamentary chamber, the Scottish Conservatives find themselves in fifth place as the number of MSPs it has fell from 31 to just 12. However, Ms Badenoch said she and Mr Findlay are ready to rebuild.
She said: 'Thursday's election was always going to be tough for the Scottish Conservatives, especially set against the party's best-ever result in 2021. Russell and I are both working hard to rebuild public trust in our party after the heavy general election defeat in 2024. That takes time, but I'm confident we'll do it. The Scottish people know that Russell and his MSPs will take the fight to the SNP, while other opposition parties are too weak or divided to do so.'
Meanwhile, Mr Findlay was upbeat as he met with the three Tory MSPs who secured the 'blue wall' of Conservative seats in the south of Scotland. Posing for pictures in Moffat, Dumfriesshire, Mr Findlay said he would be 'all guns blazing' when he returns to the Scottish Parliament.
Outlining his party's next steps, a defiant Mr Findlay said: 'Swinney hated the fact that we were such an effective primary opposition. That doesn't change. We will continue to bite at their ankles, challenge their litany of lies, stand up to their sleaze, call out their corruption and stand up for the ordinary people of Scotland.'
Mr Findlay has blamed Reform UK for many of its losses and said the party had helped the SNP in seats across the country. But despite losing several MSPs, including former leader Jackson Carlaw, Mr Findlay vowed to make full use of the reduced parliamentary sparring time he will enjoy.
He said: 'There might be this idea that we have taken a knock and then we walk off the pitch or we feel sorry for ourselves. If that's what John Swinney or anyone else thinks, they don't know the Scottish Conservatives. I am more determined than ever to come back all guns blazing. And I also have those two bob parties, chancers and misfits in my sights. We are going to suffer five more years of abysmal governance because John Swinney will only ever be interested in breaking up the United Kingdom. We stopped an SNP majority, we lost far too many people from Holyrood and some of the new MSPs are a pretty strange collection of eccentrics. They will not have the ability to do what we have been doing, which is being a strong and credible voice for mainstream Scotland.'
He also suggested Scottish voters could experience 'buyers' remorse' when they discover in the coming weeks what the new government holds. He said: 'We stood on an honest, positive platform. We vowed to cut taxes and reduce the SNP's bloated benefits bill. We were the only people talking about the £5 billion black hole in public finances and we knew this would be a difficult sell. But there will be a reckoning in due course, probably very quickly, and at that point people will realise the Greens are dangerous extremists and the SNP are the original populists who never come up with solutions. As for Reform, they are a one-man band who can't be trusted with the union and, I suspect, will prove completely dysfunctional at Holyrood. It will be more important than ever that the Scottish Conservatives stand up and be counted. Although we will be fewer, we will be as strong as we ever were and I make that commitment today.'
Unlike Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, who failed to hold any media events in the wake of losses, Mr Findlay was back out with his team. Standing beneath The Moffat Ram, a bronze-cast tribute to the Dumfries-shire area's woollen trade, the leader was all smiles as he regrouped with his three southern Scotland MSPs Craig Hoy, Finlay Carson and Rachael Hamilton.
He said: 'Nobody on our side has even questioned whether I should stand down. I am really, really pleased and energised by the support I have had from activists and MSP candidates who can see that I have done as good a job as I could in difficult circumstances. We knew Reform were going to come along as a gift to the SNP. John Swinney spent months talking up Reform. He was even doing it just a few days ago. A bunch of credulous people fell for his lie that only the SNP could stop Reform in the south of Scotland. It was a monstrous lie that he knew to be untrue and proved to be untrue because it was the Scottish Conservatives who stopped Reform here. That's why we are here today. We stopped that SNP majority, we held the Blue Wall across the south of Scotland and we will rebuild from here.'
