The Leader of the Conservative Party in Scotland Russell Findlay MSP sent out a rallying cry for Conservatism and the importance of our Union ahead of the Scottish elections next year. Read his speech in full below 👇
Hello Conference, how fantastic it is to be here with you again.
Almost exactly one year ago I was elected to be leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party, and just a few weeks after that, the outstanding Kemi Badenoch was elected as our UK leader.
Now we both knew that we had a tough fight on our hands.
We knew then, just as know now that we are fighting for the future of our great country and let me tell you this, we are up for this great scrap.
Because left in the hands of Labour and the SNP, the United Kingdom’s future would be bleak.
Weaker and divided, smaller and poorer.
Under the left-wing policies of Keir Starmer and John Swinney, the only growth would be the dept left to future generations.
I want our young people to have hope for the future.
Our party and our country, believe in the party of aspiration.
We stand for something that no other party truly does and that is advancing opportunities for those willing to work hard.
Reaping the rewards of hard graft.
We stand for the strivers.
We stand for those who create jobs and wealth.
And Conference, this is why we are in this fight.
That is why the Conservative and Unionist party must and will emerge even stronger.
And where we seek a stronger and fairer economy, Labour thinks very differently.
They want everyone to pay more tax except for, perhaps Angela Rayner.
Labour has broken so many promises all that’s left of their manifesto are photographs of Sir Keir Starmer, in clothes that someone else has paid for, standing next to people who he has sacked or people who he really should sack.
And then there’s the SNP.
Now Scotland can claim to some of the great thinkers of yester-year.
The country of Adam Smith, the father of conservatism,
Of David Hume the great moral philosopher,
And the many Scots who helped to forge the Great British Empire.
But under the SNP, Scotland has become a laboratory for weird ad whacky policies.
For the SNP, there is no policy that can be to harmful, half-baked or unhinged.
From rent controls to a basic universal income, to a four-day working week.
If it’s woke, they want it.
They embrace every mad-cap idea known to man and woman.
Yes Conference, man and woman because we Conservatives know there are two genders.
Just two, not two dozen as the SNP would have us believe.
And the architect of the SNP’s gender self-idea law was Nicola Sturgeon.
Do you remember her?
And an arch-opponent was Kemi Badenoch.
Our party killed it, stone dead.
And now Nicola Sturgeon quitting the Edinburgh parliament, which you might want to call a political deal-break.
But friends, please don’t get carried away because I have to offer the new SNP leader, John Swinney, offers more of the same division and decay.
He was not Nicola Sturgeon’s obedient deputy.
He’s been obsessed with breaking up the United Kingdom from the age of 15.
He probably recons that Brave Heart was a documentary.
And of conference if you will please indulge me, I’m going to reference the famous Brave Heart Battle cry of ‘Freedom’.
Because that word actually sums up what next year’s vital Scottish election is really all about.
The people of Scotland don’t want independence, but they do want greater freedom.
That’s the freedom to keep more of their hard-earned money.
Not pay more tax than the rest of Britain for doing the same job.
Small businesses want freedom from the SNP’s relentless barrage of rules and regulations.
Ordinary people want freedom to speak openly, not constrained by Hamza Yusuf’s chilling hate-crime law.
And it really is a great irony that the so-called party of independence has trashed so many of our freedoms.
As the party of the union, we want to give back freedom and control to the people pf Scotland.
Control over their own lives, their own decisions, their own money, and that’s what we privy stand for as Scottish Conservatives and Unionists.
Thank you.
Watch Russell's speech from Day 1 of Party Conference 👇
