📺 WATCH: Russell Findlay’s latest speech👇
Or read the full speech below:
The Scottish Parliament returns from recess next week.
I said the Scottish Parliament returns from recess next week!
But do people in the real world even know when Holyrood is sitting?
I’d bet that most don’t know the names of their MSPs or what they get up to.
The place has become irrelevant to most Scots.
There’s no doubt that the parliament is a busy place.
But being busy is not the same as being productive.
What happens at Holyrood is often a waste of time and taxpayers’ money.
It fixates on fringe issues that the majority don’t care about.
Yes, I’m thinking of the SNP’s bizarre obsession with gender self-ID.
It wastes time on problems beyond its remit.
Yes, I’m thinking of puffed-up MSPs who wag their fingers at the world.
And when the Scottish Parliament does focus on the right things, it spends vast sums on poor outcomes.
Yes, I’m thinking of the SNP’s disastrous handling of the NHS, schools, ferries … frankly, it’s a big list.
Holyrood was supposed to bring decision-making closer to the people.
But it’s never felt more remote.
I heard that over summer in various places I visited.
Businesses are getting screwed by government who make life more difficult with a relentless barrage of rules and regulations.
People are sick of being told what to do by politicians who they elected.
People are sick of being forced to pay more tax only to have less power over their own lives.
Households are already struggling with the cost of living … but the SNP ALWAYS come back for more
I think that punishing people with forever rising taxes is unjust and unacceptable.
Politicians need to give the public a break.
Yes, a financial break.
But also respite from the white noise of constant interference in our lives.
What we can eat and drink.
What we can drive and how to heat our homes.
What we can say – even in the privacy of our own homes.
Decision-making in Scotland is too centralised.
Run by members of a cosy self-serving club with no pressure to better serve the paying public.
They represent a block on progress.
That’s why a vague line about gender reform buried in an SNP manifesto morphed into an extreme gender self-ID law.
They couldn’t care less about what the public actually wants.
They have no respect for the values of ordinary, decent and hard-working mainstream Scotland.
Yet they have total control over our schools, hospitals, justice system and economy.
I am of course talking about the dismal SNP politicians who have run Scotland for 18 years.
When I say ‘run Scotland’, I mean run it into the ground.
After almost two miserable decades of incompetence and dishonesty, all they have to show for it is division and decay.
John Swinney sits at the top of the pyramid.
For years he was Nicola Sturgeon’s ruthless fixer.
During that time, the SNP nurtured an obedient machinery of state to do their bidding.
These yes men and women run Scotland’s vast and powerful public sector.
The SNP have moulded them in their party’s image.
Nobody dare question the received wisdom of the SNP paymasters.
Dissent is not tolerated.
And you had better wear the right lanyard.
The state sector pays very well indeed.
Many of those on six-figure salaries, cushy hours and gold-plated pensions would get nothing like that in a real world of private sector meritocracy.
A few years ago, in my past life, I investigated the lucrative quango work of Jeane Freeman.
I discovered that before entering Holyrood she worked more days on the state payroll than there are days in the year.
The newspaper headline referred to her as a ‘superhuman’ SNP quango queen.
Eyebrows were initially raised.
But this was quickly followed by shrugged shoulders.
It seemed that no-one was that bothered about this dubious situation.
When the SNP came to power in 2007, they stole this state model from Scottish Labour.
They assembled a replica apparatus that treats public coffers like a piggy bank for them and their pals.
For decades, power in Scotland has been concentrated inside the Holyrood bubble — first Labour, then SNP.
They’ve imposed a big-state, high-tax, left-wing agenda.
This entitled political class has a firm stake in protecting its own interests.
Self-preservation is everything.
That’s why SNP drone politicians have no desire to get rid of those who are not good enough to do their jobs, or to tackle institutional rot.
Scotland seems to be run like a private members’ club which is hostile to any form of progress
Access by invitation only.
With a network of left-wing lobbyists acting as gatekeepers.
They decide what should be on the agenda, even if it’s at odds with the views of mainstream Scotland.
Those who deviate from accepted groupthink are shouted down and shut out.
Look at the way they behave towards women over gender self-ID.
The brave Scottish women who refuse to wheesht are still being traduced for daring to speak out against the SNP.
We see the same intolerance in relation to Scotland’s tragic record as Europe’s drugs death capital.
The SNP’s favoured experts — hand-picked and taxpayer-funded — don’t just dictate policy but shape the debate.
We saw this during the ugly intolerance of the gender debate.
And we see it in response to OUR Right to Recovery Bill.
This law would reduce deaths by expanding rehabilitation.
It has grassroots support and backing from numerous frontline experts.
Except those who receive government funding.
A small group of publicly-funded bodies attack our legislation because they seek to protect the status quo.
They must shield the system they created, and depend upon for a living, even though it is failing so catastrophically.
That’s why desperate addicts are refused rehab and their addictions are catered for.
Instead of getting clean, they’re patronised.
They’re told that they won’t be stigmatised for what the SNP sickeningly regard as a lifestyle choice.
The deadly misery of drug addiction should NEVER be normalised.
Gender and drugs are not the only examples of groups with the patronage of SNP ministers presenting a pro-government united front.
Across policy areas, such groups work in unison to push the party line and suppress dissent.
A circular system of approval exists between the SNP state and its state-funded activists, state-funded charities and state-funded academics.
The reach of the left-wing establishment includes quangos, third sector agencies and charities that survive on government funding.
And let’s not forget the trade unions who dictate Scottish education policy.
The public sector is littered with SNP loyalists because the government bestows appointments and contracts to those who toe the line.
Collectively, from top to bottom, these people don’t trust the public to make their own decisions.
And they have no interest in tackling the broken status quo.
That’s a key reason why we’ve ended up with a parliament so detached from reality.
That’s how the Scottish Parliament ended up wasting years on radical gender politics that made Scotland an international laughing stock.
It’s why MSPs recently spent hours debating who can use the toilets at Holyrood.
It’s why the SNP bring forward laws that go against our values of personal freedom and freedom of speech.
It’s why the SNP bring forward policies that would devastate rural Scotland.
It’s why the SNP impose measures that cripple business and punish aspiration.
To maintain their harmful grip on Scotland, the SNP must control Holyrood.
On the surface it might look like a parliament where ideas can be tested, freely and robustly.
But in reality the topics of debate are tightly controlled.
I spent years on the criminal justice committee and despaired at the way in which the SNP shaped legislation.
They pursued law-making backed by their client state but often without any real evidence to support it.
I lost count of the times I asked witnesses from state agencies for basic data – only to be met with a blank look.
Contentious issues at Holyrood are often subject to what amounts to superficial scrutiny.
Public sector witnesses to parliamentary committees are given free rein to waffle uninterrupted.
Their publicly-funded training appears to teach them how not to give a straight answer to the public.
MSPs who ask straight questions are often treated with hand-wringing disdain when they’re only doing their jobs on behalf of the public.
Ministerial statements to parliament in relation to big topical issues are usually laughably light on detail.
They never answer questions.
As illuminating as a 10 watt light bulb.
We see the same platitudes in response to the weekly rounds of portfolio questions.
I experience the same sham exercise every Thursday at 12 noon … tune in next week, folks.
And when SNP ministers are exposed as incapable — or downright dishonest — they suffer no consequences.
They glide on just like the fleet of Teslas they’re chauffeured around in.
As for SNP backbenchers who routinely read out scripted questions handed to them from their own government … they ought to be ashamed.
I’ve seen jellyfish with more spine.
The inconvenient truth is that Holyrood has become little more than a performative parliament.
A parliament that panders to a government which uses every sneaky trick to evade scrutiny.
John Swinney has been central to this process.
Look at the Edinburgh tram inquiry where much of his evidence – under oath – was rejected by a judge
It exposed and I quote, his “lack of candour”.
Interesting to note that Swinney’s government has just passed a law making candour a requirement for police officers.
The tram report questioned John Swinney’s integrity.
The consequences?
None.
One man in Scotland has the power to formally measure what the SNP say they will do and what they actually do.
The Auditor General also has the power to examine the books, to follow the SNP money trail.
He regularly lays bare a litany of broken promises … but also an insidious culture of secrecy around the spending of taxpayers’ money.
Scotland’s bloated public sector despises transparency and sneers at accountability.
They think they know best.
They are painfully and arrogantly certain about the supremacy of their fellow members of the political establishment.
Just as concerning is the relationship between the SNP and Scotland’s civil service which is obliged to be impartial.
I have no doubt that most civil servants are professional and conscientious.
Yet, we’ve frequently had grounds to question if all of them understand that they’re supposed to be servants of the people – not the politicians.
Nationalist ministers publish pro-independence propaganda using taxpayers’ money.
They use channels of government to promote the separation of Scotland from the rest of the UK, in defiance of hard facts.
We have been clear — government resources and communications should not become weapons of SNP spin.
The misuse of the machinery of state is not only confined to the SNP’s obsession with breaking up our country.
The First Minister was recently allowed to host a summit which he billed as being against the far-right.
It was no such thing.
It was a nakedly party political stunt designed to promote the SNP.
Yet it was all paid for by the taxpayer.
I didn’t go because I refused to be co-opted into an SNP PR operation.
Inevitably, Anas Sarwar and the Lib Dem leader did turn up.
I raised this SNP summit during a recent meeting wirth senior civil servants.
I was told that it was all within the rules.
I was told that they had checked with something called the government’s propriety and ethics directorate.
After the meeting,
I had a look at the propriety and ethics directorate.
And guess who’s its boss?
A certain J.Swinney.
So John Swinney holds a taxpayer-funded political summit and when the civil service checks if this is okay … they ask John Swinney.
They really do take the public for fools.
The civil service does have a tool that it can use against ministers who make decisions which are detrimental to the taxpayer.
Ministerial directions are issued by ministers when they proceed with a course of action in defiance of formal civil service objection.
Since 2008, around 70 ministerial directions have been issued by UK government ministers.
But under the SNP, there have only ever been 3.
And two of these relate to the SNP’s corrupt CalMac ferry scandal.
Another egregious example of the SNP’s twisted form of governance can be seen in their use of false information.
They routinely appear in parliament or on TV spouting bare-faced lies — whether about energy, child poverty, education, the economy or any other topic …
And then continue to spout them even once the lie has been exposed.
They have no shame.
And they are allowed to get away with it.
Considering all of this, you could be forgiven for thinking Scotland has become a one-party state.
It’s not quite.
But it is a one-ideology state.
The Scottish political establishment believes that taxes must only go UP.
That benefits must also keep rising.
That immigration is always good.
That free speech must be curtailed to avoid causing offence.
That anyone can be any gender regardless of the rights of others.
That business should be treated with suspicion.
That private enterprise must be kept in check by red tape and tax.
That trade unions must dictate what happens in schools.
That throwing limitless sums of money at the NHS is the only option.
All of these are the ideology of Scotland’s political establishment.
Anyone with a bit of common sense can see that change is necessary.
People want to play their part in society.
They understand the need to pay a fair share for public services and the collective good.
But NOT when a self-serving political elite in Edinburgh treats them with such contempt.
So, here are 3 proposals that I’m making to bring about change.
To take power away from the Holyrood establishment and put it in the hands of the people of Scotland.
Firstly, I have a better plan than John Swinney to put Scotland’s future in Scotland’s hands.
Because yet again John Swinney is threatening to put independence on the ballot paper next year.
Well I believe there should be more devolved power … but AWAY from the Scottish Parliament.
Local communities and councils should be empowered by a new era of devolved decision-making.
Communities deserve a direct say in how money is spent.
Council budgets should be bigger — funded from the SNP’s vast central pot.
They should also no longer be ring-fenced by ministers in Edinburgh.
Their money, their choices.
We would work on a plan to transfer new powers and funding from Edinburgh to local communities.
We will issue a detailed paper on this in due course.
But one example would be to give councils the power to lower business rates in their area.
It’s a Conservative principle to trust people to make their own decisions.
People should have maximum freedom to spend their hard-earned cash how they want – on their family, to build a business, to buy a home.
The next Scottish budget, and after that the next parliament, should impose no new red tape on businesses or households.
At the very least, let’s guarantee to scrap existing unnecessary bureaucracy before any more is even considered.
Secondly, we need a radical overhaul of transparency and accountability.
Transparency is not a luxury.
Accountability is not optional.
Whistleblowing in the public sector should be embraced even when it upsets ministers.
Too often, whistleblowers in Scotland are crushed by the state which uses its vast resources to inflict prolonged legal attrition.
We would extend lobbying laws to public-sector organisations.
Those who seek to influence policies should be obligated to full disclosure.
And those in receipt of taxpayers’ money should publicly declare it.
Ushering in a new, genuine era of transparency would shine a light on dodgy and costly decisions made behind closed doors.
People would be able to see EXACTLY how their cash is being spent.
Thirdly, we would cut Scotland’s self-serving political establishment down to size.
We have so many public bodies that even Scotland’s Information Commissioner can’t keep track of them all.
We must reduce the number of quangos by at least a quarter.
Scotland has a far higher number of public sector workers than the rest of the UK.
It’s 22.5 per cent in Scotland compared to 17.4 per cent UK-wide.
We can start by returning the civil service to the levels of a decade ago.
We have already proposed a frontline first guarantee.
This would prioritise public sector jobs that actually make a difference to people’s lives.
In other words, more nurses and teachers — fewer pen pushers and PR people.
Finally, the civil service would be outlawed from agitating for the break-up of Britain.
If the SNP wants to waste its time and ring-fenced donations on this folly, that’s their right.
But it’s not their right to do so with taxpayers’ money.
No single political party should call the shots.
Nor their public sector client state made up of crony activists.
All of the actions I’ve outlined today would give people the freedom to make more decisions about their own lives.
We would transfer power from politicians to the people, where it belongs.
I trust the Scottish public to make decisions for their own families and communities.
If you agree, let’s work together on a new era of local power.
You don’t have to believe my party has all the solutions.
But we do know that meaningful power should be seized from Holyrood and put back into your hands.
I want a genuine parliament that respects, trusts and listens to mainstream Scotland.
A parliament that works for the people, not against them.
Share this on:
🔵 X
