Craig Hoy is the Chairman of the Scottish Conservatives, and MSP for the South of Scotland.
As you’d expect, the election campaign in Scotland has its own distinct quirks and features. One of the consequences of devolution is that almost every aspect of government here is the responsibility of the SNP, which has been in power for more than 17 years.
Their record on all the priorities – the economy, the NHS, education, crime and local services – has been atrocious.
Since the ignominious departure of Nicola Sturgeon, and during the almost comically inept leadership of Humza Yousaf, that has become more and more apparent to the electorate.
The SNP, who naturally don’t believe in devolution themselves, have always blamed their own failings on “Westminster”, despite the biggest UK block grants in history.
But now their record is coming home to roost. The party is mired in scandal, including criminal charges, and in a state of more or less open civil war. Donors, and voters, are deserting them in droves.
While the SNP are down, they are not out, and the campaign is far from being over. But Scotland is an election battleground in which the Conservatives, whatever their challenges elsewhere, have the potential not only to hold, but actually gain seats.
In key constituencies up and down the country, it’s a straight (and often a close) fight between us and the Nats. Things are very tight across our target seats.
The almost hysterical SNP pleas to make Scotland (where around 700,000 people voted Conservative at the last election) “Tory-free” are an acknowledgement of that electoral reality.
It’s also, of course, an acknowledgement that the last thing they want to do is campaign on their dismal record.
So far, the most notable feature of the SNP campaign has been their launching, and relaunching, it on what feels like every second day or so. They have launched more campaigns than ferries, which – more than six years and hundreds of millions of pounds later – still aren’t in the water.
Not even John Swinney, their leader, seems to be able to keep track. At Sunday’s relaunch, “Honest John” chose to ignore his earlier speeches and photo-ops, but later said that this rally had been in the calendar prior to the election being called.
Far from being a fresh-faced new broom, Swinney previously led the Nats to ignominious electoral failure a full 20 years ago. He has been a minister, the chief fixer, and a loyal lieutenant to every party leader for almost the entire period since.
He’s SNP continuity personified. Apart from bringing in Kate Forbes to a largely presentational role and making a couple of very minor tweaks, his cabinet remains the same as his hapless predecessor’s.
So do his policies. Independence, naturally, remains “page one, line one” of the manifesto. Pressed by Douglas Ross during Monday’s STV debate to say what line two was, we got the usual gripes about austerity and Westminster, to which the solution is… independence. So line two is about their obsession as well.
That abiding fixation is why Scotland’s economy, public services, and political discourse are in such dire straits. The SNP ignored the management of schools and hospitals for years, slashing council funding while pursuing pointless court cases and fictitious “independence papers”.
That neglect has given us 840,000 Scots on an NHS waiting list, the highest drugs deaths in Europe, schools sliding down international comparison tables, a policing, prisons and justice system at the point of breakdown, and cuts in local council funding that have resulted in basic services being all but abandoned.
Rural Scotland has suffered particularly acutely, compounded by the ignorance of Central Belt SNP politicians and the active hostility of their former Green colleagues.
On top of the negligence, the SNP/Green partnership, when pursuing their ideologically unsound pet projects, delivered a series of ill-considered, badly designed and wildly unpopular pieces of legislation.
There’s been the illiberal Hate Crime Act, the incoherent Gender Recognition Reform Act, a botched and abandoned Deposit Return Scheme, and punitive and counter-productive measures on short-term lets and rent control – all while making Scotland the highest-taxed part of the UK, failing to pass on business rates relief available elsewhere and strangling Scottish firms with red tape.
Small wonder that growth, during Nicola Sturgeon’s tenure, was half that in the rest of the country.
The Scottish Conservatives, as well as being the official opposition at Holyrood, have for much of that time been the only opposition to the SNP and its disastrous policies.
Scottish Labour MSPs lined up to vote with the SNP on them, as well as breaking a pre-election promise not to strike deals with the Nationalists at local government level by promptly joining them in Dumfries and Galloway.
Both the SNP and Labour, despite furious and belated attempts to obfuscate and backpedal, have taken positions that effectively throw the oil and gas sector, one of Scotland’s most important industries, under the bus. They’ll both turn off the taps in the North Sea.
By contrast, Scottish Conservatives have mounted a robust defence of the industry and Scottish business more widely, with a policy paper Grasping the Thistle last year.
We’ve been alone in standing up for rural Scotland and will release our rural manifesto this week. We’ve produced policies for tackling the shame of Scotland’s drug deaths and for NHS recovery.
It was sustained pressure from the Conservatives that saw off Sturgeon and then, in short order, the hapless and hopeless Yousaf.
Swinney’s various attempts to kick off the SNP campaign have been disastrous. Most of all, his defence of the former health secretary Michael Matheson, who has now been suspended from the Scottish parliament after claiming £11,000 of public money for an iPad data bill run up on holiday, and then repeatedly lying about it.
The First Minister, to the disbelief of the Scottish public, tried to ignore parliamentary committee recommendations to prevent his suspension. It was a graphic indication that the SNP invariably puts its own party interests and their old pals above those of the Scottish people.
That’s now reflected in their dismal poll ratings. But in many seats, only a vote for the Scottish Conservatives can ensure they have not just a bad, but a fatal, result. A wipeout for the SNP at Westminster would hasten their demise at Holyrood.
For Scotland’s sake, and for the future of the Union, it’s essential to get that result in this election.
The post Craig Hoy: In Scotland, it’s the Conservatives leading the charge against the Nationalists’ disastrous rule appeared first on Conservative Home.
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: Craig Hoy
This content is courtesy of, and owned and copyrighted by, http://www.conservativehome.com and its author. This content is made available by use of the public RSS feed offered by the host site and is used for educational purposes only. If you are the author or represent the host site and would like this content removed now and in the future, please contact USSANews.com using the email address in the Contact page found in the website menu.