Scottish Tory leadership race: runners and riders

While contenders in the UK Tory leadership race ramp up their campaigns, north of the border the Scottish Conservative contest is just about to get started. Nominations for candidates to succeed outgoing leader Douglas Ross formally open this Thursday, and will close on the 22 August at 12pm. Each leadership hopeful will need 100 party members to back them in order to formally stand before voting takes place next month – with the winner to be announced on 27 September. So far six candidates have declared they will run for the top job. Below is a list of Steerpike’s runners and riders…

Russell Findlay (7): a former investigative journalist, the party’s current justice spokesperson was the first to announce his candidacy in a length piece in the Scottish Daily Mail. Findlay insists the party needs a ‘common-sense conservative approach’ and is running under the slogan ‘leadership for change’. Andrew Bowie MP has expressed his support for Findlay, alongside a number of MSPs…

Brian Whittle: the ex-Olympian confirmed there would indeed be a contest as the second leadership hopeful to announce. He told the Scotsman that at the moment the Scottish Tories need to ‘decide how we pick ourselves up and prepare for the next race’, adding: ‘It’s not the losses that matter, it’s how I respond to them.’

Meghan Gallacher (1): currently the deputy leader of the party, Gallacher has been Ross’s second-in-command since 2022. She has called for a party ‘reset’, and says that she wants to build a ‘modern, centre right party’ focusing on the right to buy a home and improving support for pensioners and parents. Gallacher is running with the campaign slogan: ‘Reset. Rebuild. Restore.’

Roz McCall MSP

Liam Kerr (1): the current party spokesperson on education and skills, Kerr has slammed his party for a ‘terrifying lack of deeply considered, long-term, cross-portfolio thinking’, and insists that if he were leader ‘the Scottish Conservatives will start from the future: a 15 -year vision of what a vibrant, prosperous UK and world-leading Scotland will be’.

Maurice Golden MSP

Jamie Greene: the backbencher, who was demoted from the Scottish Tory frontbench by Ross last summer in what some considered a move to reduce leadership rivals, announced his candidacy in the Herald this month. Greene believes that as party leader he would fix a ‘broken’ Holyrood and change his party to ‘govern with respect’, putting ‘economic ambition…front and centre’. His campaign slogan reads: ‘Fix the party, fix politics, fix Scotland.’

Murdo Fraser: the business, tourism and economic growth spokesperson has written a lengthy piece for the Scotsman in which he slams both Ross and Boris Johnson – and tells his party membership ‘you have been let down’. Fraser says that he will not, as he once proposed, separate the Scottish group from the UK party. So far he has received public backing from the founder of ConservativeHome, Tim Montgomerie, and deputy speaker in the House of Lords, Ian Duncan. But where will the rest of the Scottish Tories lodge their support? Stay tuned…