Thomas Heald: The point of the Scottish Conservatives is we’re a genuinely fresh offer

Councillor Thomas Heald is a Scottish Conservative councillor for Dunblane and Bridge of Allan, Scottish Conservative and Unionist candidate for Dunfermline and political advisor in the Scottish Parliament.

When I speak to residents on the doorstep, whether in my ward, in small Fife villages or in the rural hinterlands of Perthshire, the same themes come up time and again. People are worried about the NHS, about the state of our local schools, about heating bills. Yes, many still care deeply about Scotland’s place in the UK. But they also want to know who’s going to fix the potholes, cut waiting lists, and help their children get on.

That’s why I believe the Scottish Conservative Party stands at a crossroads.

For years, our clear position on the Union served as a powerful rallying point. We were the natural voice for all who feared the division of another referendum. But it’s no longer enough by itself. We need to become not just the party that says “No” to independence, but the party that says “Yes” to improving lives here in Scotland. This was a reality that was recognised by all leadership contenders in the summer of 2024.

As a councillor, I see every day how decisions in Holyrood and Westminster play out on the ground. When SNP ministers squeeze council budgets, it’s local services that suffer. Libraries close, community projects vanish and roads deteriorate. Meanwhile, politics at Holyrood, and to a certain extent Westminster, is entirely focused on fringe issues with MSPs and MPs seemingly judged by how many events they can get their photo taken at in any given week.

A few weeks ago, at a summer fair in Dunblane, I spent half an hour talking to a young mum worried sick about her son’s speech therapy being delayed yet again. She wasn’t interested in politicians scoring points on TV, or which community group had been congratulated with a parliamentary motion which takes a researcher 10 minutes to copy and paste from a news article, she just wanted to know why it was taking over a year for her boy to get the help he needed.

Then last month, at a local drop-in, a retired joiner told me how his wife had waited 14 months for a knee replacement: “We’re not after special treatment, just the treatment we paid in all our lives for.”

That’s the real test for us.

We need to be honest. The polls leading up to the Scottish Parliamentary election are tough to say the least. So there’s another challenge we can’t ignore: defending the very place of the Scottish Conservative Party in public life. Too often, we hear that we have no right to be heard in Scotland, that somehow existing is an affront. Meanwhile, new parties like Reform UK threaten to fracture the pro-Union vote on populist slogans, weakening the only serious alternative to nationalism.

We have to be clear: the Scottish Conservatives are the only credible centre-right force that can beat the SNP in seats, hold them to account, get the focus back on issues that matter and yes, defend the Union. If we allow our vote to be split or our voice to be drowned out, we hand the nationalists exactly what they want.

Over a decade ago when I first entered Scottish politics, I saw first-hand that one of the great successes of Ruth Davidson’s leadership was building a confident, Scottish identity, standing up for Scotland inside the UK, and offering policies tailored to Scottish needs. We must hold on to that.

Whether it’s backing our farmers and fishermen, driving forward crucial education reforms, or tackling Scotland’s tragic drug deaths, we need policies rooted in Scotland’s priorities. That’s how we show the Union works, by delivering real benefits to people here, not by parroting lines from London.

We’ve rightly exposed SNP failures on ferries, on education, on the NHS. But to win back voters in our cities and keep the confidence of our rural heartlands, we must be more than critics. We need a positive, hopeful agenda focused on opportunity, social mobility, and restoring excellence to our public services.

That means championing high-quality apprenticeships, backing housebuilding so young families can stay local, and putting forward bold plans to cut NHS backlogs. Crucially, we must show we care just as much about the health of the nation and giving every child the best start as we do about safeguarding the Union.

None of this happens overnight. Rebuilding will take hard work, humility and, most importantly, new faces. Councillors, MSPs and activists who understand their communities inside out. It means challenging old assumptions, and being open to fresh ideas. We have so much talent in our party that is just waiting to provide this impetuous and, should the worst happen in 2026 and our party is diminished in representation in the Scottish Parliament, it will be these people who will be tasked with re-building the party.

Above all, it means earning back trust by being competent, compassionate and constructive. If we can do that, we’ll secure not just the future of the Scottish Conservative Party, but a better future for Scotland within our United Kingdom.

That’s a cause well worth rolling up our sleeves for.

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