Russell Findlay: The SNP must face justice for damage done to Scotland

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Russell Findlay MSP

📺 WATCH: Russell Findlay’s first speech of 2025👇

Or read the full speech below:

Welcome and thank you to everyone for joining us today.

Just two weeks into a new year and it’s already shaping up to be a lively one in Scottish politics.

Yesterday saw some big news about the SNP’s most controversial duo.

Many questions must still be answered – not least about the dodgy finances – but yesterday, one of them finally sailed into the sunset.

I’m talking, of course, about the CalMac ferries.

Wasn’t it wonderful seeing the Glen Sannox take its first passengers to Arran — a mere 7 YEARS after being launched by Nicola Sturgeon. It’s now even got windows.

Now let me turn to the central point of today’s speech …

I didn’t set out to become a politician from an early age.

As a younger man, if anyone had told me that one day I would be leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party, I’d have expressed surprise …

Perhaps even wondered what they’d been drinking.

For most of my life, I’ve been firmly outside the political bubble.

I viewed the political world with suspicion.

All that spin and doublespeak. The infuriating inability to communicate clearly in plain English.

As an investigative journalist, my job was to hold the powerful to account.

To rattle cages and to get straight answers.

I did my best to stand up for those who were treated unfairly … who had lost hope … and felt that nobody listened to them.

It wasn’t until I was in my 40s that I decided to get involved in politics because I reckoned I could make a greater impact.

And so here I am … an outsider on the inside.

A first-term MSP and just over 100 days into the job as party leader.

But my instincts have not changed.

I still don’t like when politicians break their promises or refuse to admit mistakes.

And I’m still driven to do the right thing.

Now, as then, I’m determined to help ordinary, decent Scots who have suffered through no fault of their own.

I want to help the disadvantaged and disenfranchised.

People who feel forgotten by Scotland’s self-satisfied and self-serving political establishment.

Each and every one of us is a product of our environment …

What we have experienced, good and bad.

This helps to shape our views, our character, our choices, and our actions.

Standing up for what’s right is not just a job — it’s part of who I am.

My fight is still against injustice.

That’s why I’m in politics.

That’s what gets me up in the morning.

The public often asks politicians ‘what do you even stand for?’

I’ve thought about this long and hard.

And I can sum up what I stand for in one word … justice.

I don’t only mean the narrow definition of Scotland’s broken justice system which causes so much misery.

I mean justice across society.

Justice is about fairness for all.

It’s something that children can understand.

It means people get the just reward for their effort.

It means fair pay for fair work – and governments only taking a fair share in tax.

It means helping those in need – but not that it becomes unfair to others.

People across Scotland suffer the daily grind of injustice in so many aspects of their lives.

Look at education …

Is there any greater injustice than the way in which the SNP are failing a generation of young people?

Classroom violence spiralling out of control.

Pupils and teachers fear going into school.

Last year, a physical assault or verbal abuse took place every two minutes of the school day.

But teachers feel powerless.

Their hands are tied by the SNP who don’t believe those responsible for threats and violence should be punished.

Instead, victims are required to take part in what are called ‘restorative conversations’

Conversations in which teachers are told they shouldn’t use terms like ‘bully’ because this could be ‘disempowering’.

Where is the justice for those pupils who want to learn and the teachers who want to teach?

Where are the consequences for the violent and disruptive minority?

There are none …

Instead of preparing children for life in the real world, the SNP are teaching a generation to forget the principle of personal responsibility.

John Swinney’s government is also setting children up to fail by letting educational standards plummet.

The so-called ‘Curriculum for Excellence’ downgrades the critical acquisition of knowledge in favour of ‘experiences’.

After almost 18 wasted years, the SNP’s latest daft idea is for a new curriculum that will focus on ‘big ideas’.

That’s what their Education Scotland quango published at the end of December.

Parents are tired of jargon, of failed initiatives and meaningless rebrands.

They just want schools to do their job:

To give children the knowledge and skills they need to thrive and prosper in the real world.

Here are my common-sense suggestions to fix the injustice in education.

Deal effectively with disruptive pupils.

Empower teachers to remove abusive and dangerous students.

And return to a knowledge-based curriculum that has previously served Scotland so well.

Let’s look at housing …

Scotland’s housing market is broken and unjust.

More than a third of Scottish councils have declared housing emergencies …

For many young people, even those earning a decent wage, home ownership has become a distant dream.

But the SNP’s response is a Housing Bill that won’t build a single house.

Nor will they cut taxes for homebuyers or help people get on the property ladder.

They will, however, make temporary rent controls permanent.

Rent controls which the SNP were warned repeatedly would not work … having already failed in cities across Europe.

The result has been rents rising faster in Scotland than in London.

Young people paying so much that they have no hope of saving for a deposit to buy.

But the SNP don’t really care if their policies do good, as long as they sound good.

Virtue signalling in pursuit of attractive headlines is the SNP way.

There are common sense ways to fix this:

  • Scrap their counter-productive rent controls.
  • Stop making life difficult for small house-builders facing Byzantine net zero regulations.
  • Reduce tax on home purchases.

All of this is necessary and indeed just.

Then there is the NHS …

The deal is that access to treatment should be available when we need it.

It’s as simple as that.

But that deal is being broken by the SNP far too often.

People pay their taxes – but can’t get to see a GP when they need to.

They’re left waiting in agony for routine procedures like hip and knee replacements.

Or waiting on a trolley in the corridor of an A&E unit.

Delayed cancer treatment can be the difference between life and death.

Under the SNP, the NHS is not working.

Yet it receives more taxpayers’ money than ever before.

Where are all those tens of billions of pounds going?

Well, we discovered that more than 300 NHS and health quango bosses are each paid more than £100,000.

Patients are suffering. Doctors and nurses are run ragged – while an army of bosses pocket huge salaries.

People are rightly fed up after years of broken SNP promises.

The nationalists have instilled injustice in our NHS.

There are solutions:

  • Reduce bureaucracy.
  • Stop wasting precious staff time with form-filling.
  • Cut down on a bloated cast of managers who don’t treat a single patient.

Instead, and this is basic common sense, put that money directly where it’s needed – on the frontline.

What of rural Scotland?

Farmers put the food on our plates.

Custodians of our countryside, they are out at all hours in all weather.

Yet they’re treated with disrespect by the SNP and Labour.

Did you know that rural spending is the only budget being cut by John Swinney’s government?

And the UK Labour government is dealing an even bigger blow.

Rachel Reeves’ family farm tax is a spiteful attack on those who want to preserve their farms for future generations.

This is not fair.

Such injustice afflicts the wider rural community.

The SNP has failed to upgrade key roads. Lives are being lost.

And despite yesterday’s Glen Sannox sailing, island communities continue to be failed.

People in Scotland’s rural communities are deprived of critical infrastructure and services.

Yet at the same time they are being forced to accept an industrialisation they don’t want.

This is in the form of vast highways of monster pylons across our beautiful countryside.

All of these issues can be put right. Justice can prevail:

  • Reverse the family farm tax
  • Build and improve roads
  • Deliver ferries
  • Empower rural Scots who know their needs much better than some minister sitting in Edinburgh.

I now turn to what the SNP has done to Scotland’s councils …

Over almost two decades they have systematically stripped power from local communities.

The SNP always think they know best — imposing their inflexible centralised agenda.

They have also quite deliberately underfunded councils year after year.

It’s why councils are now forced to consider punishing council tax hikes.

And it’s why residents keep paying more in return for poorer services —

  • Bins that don’t get collected on time
  • Libraries and leisure centres closing down
  • Potholes that never get fixed

We would flip the relationship between the Scottish government and local councils on its head.

So it’s not government telling communities how things should be run — but the other way around.

A massive area of growing injustice in Scotland is the SNP’s tax regime …

Hard-working Scots keep having to pay more for less.

Taxpayers across the country put in the hard graft, day in, day out, to provide for themselves and their families.

But they end up picking up the tab for SNP nonsense.

Like chauffeur-driven trips to the football and long-haul flights.

They’re paying for schools that can’t keep pupils safe; hospitals that are buckling under pressure;

And ineffective government that ignores what people need.

Any concept of demanding value for taxpayers seems to have been abandoned by all of the left-wing Holyrood parties.

A parliament that thinks there’s no limit to how much it can take from those who work so hard for their families.

Where is the justice for Scotland’s taxpayers?

The SNP get away with this blatant injustice because – as we saw with the budget last week – no other opposition party in Holyrood will challenge them.

I know that we are the only party who can stand up against injustice in Scotland.

John Swinney and Anas Sarwar may be committed to public service.

They have both been politicians for many years.

But I don’t believe either of them are fuelled by the same sense of purpose.

Fighting for justice – fighting against injustice – is what drives me.

John Swinney’s career has been driven by a desire to break up the UK.

On practically every other issue, he’s chopped and changed principles, discarded values and altered his views.

He was a firm backer of Alex Salmond — then became Nicola Sturgeon’s staunchest ally.

He’s not stood by his values on anything … except for the cause of Scottish separation.

Then there’s Anas Sarwar.

Another template politician who only seems driven by personal ambition.

There’s nothing wrong with believing in a cause — as John Swinney does — or being personally ambitious — as Anas Sarwar is.

But I believe the public needs more than that from politicians in an age where trust is breaking down.

I’m motivated by the values that I’ve held for my whole life.

They’re ingrained in my character.

Fighting injustice won’t change.

But I do want to change how things are done in the Scottish Parliament.

That will be central to the Scottish Conservative campaign in the 2026 Holyrood election — change.

And as of last week, we are now the only party standing for change.

Labour have quietly dropped the slogan that won them the general election.

They’ve told journalists that it’s gone … vanishing just as quickly as their approval ratings.

The public wanted change after my party let them down.

Now Labour are running scared of change because they’ve already let the public down.

Not after a decade-plus in power, but within months.

They’ve already broken many, many promises.

Here is some of what they promised:

  • No increase in national insurance.
  • No new taxes on farmers.
  • Keep the winter fuel payment.
  • Protect single sex spaces.
  • No cliff-edge for North Sea oil and gas.
  • Cut energy bills.

All of those commitments, and more — broken.

Anas Sarwar won’t stand up to Sir Keir Starmer … no matter the damage he inflicts.

Anas Sarwar looks even more spineless when it comes to standing up to John Swinney.

We saw it last week with the SNP budget.

Labour votes mean that it will pass. They didn’t get – or even ask for – anything in return.

This is the same Anas Sarwar who abstained in the Nicola Sturgeon no confidence vote after she mislead parliament.

And who also backed Sturgeon’s damaging gender law and Humza Yousaf’s hate crime act.

I have no idea what Labour stand for — and neither do they.

This week they unveiled a new slogan — new direction.

It really should be no direction.

Sarwar thought he was headed in the direction of Bute House.

He now looks completely lost.

He thinks that taking on the SNP means trying to become the SNP.

Labour have dropped the change slogan.

Well, I will happily and proudly pick it up.

It’s what the people of Scotland desperately want to see — change at Holyrood.

Next year, change can only mean one thing — removing the SNP from power.

They must be held to account for 18 years of lies, division, broken promises, and the worst record of any western government.

That is the change the people of Scotland are crying out for.

The SNP must face justice.

And I don’t mean locking them up …  I mean locking them out of office.

To finally ensure that they are held to account for what they’ve done to our beloved country.

John Swinney is pretending he’s a new man.

It’s laughable.

This careerist has been around the SNP cabinet table for so long he could be mistaken for a chair.

His attempted relaunch is stranger than when Twitter became X.

It’s worse than when Coca-Cola became New Coke – the biggest marketing mistake in history.

I’m not buying the John Swinney rebrand.

He has not changed one bit.

John Swinney must think people are daft as John Swinney tries to distance John Swinney from John Swinney.

Because all that really motivates him — still — is a desire to break up our country.

He stood by Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell for all those years.

Only my party can deliver justice by removing the SNP …. because Labour actually agrees with their harmful left-wing agenda.

We are the only party putting forward a vision for change for Scotland.

A proud Scottish Conservative vision where justice is done and seen to be done.

Where fairness is not just for some, but for all.

Where opportunity and the chance to get ahead is the right of everyone.

Where power is not centralised, it lies with communities.

Where aspiration is encouraged, and success is celebrated.

I’m realistic about where my party is just now.

But whatever the polls show, the sands of Scottish politics are constantly shifting.

The 2026 election is all to play for.

It will all depend on us as a party. What we do. How we fight the campaign to come.

Our actions. Our efforts. Our values.

What we stand for will define what we achieve in 2026.

I’m no longer a journalist.

But I am still driven to stand up for what’s right, to help people who feel ignored and to fight against the powerful.

I want justice.

Justice for the people of Scotland who have suffered far too long under the SNP.

Justice for everyone let down and left behind by our broken politics.

If you want change at Holyrood, then the Scottish Conservative party is ready to represent you.

And we are the only ones who will.

Thank you.

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