Watch as Russell Findlay sets our common-sense plan to stop the SNP, defeat their push for another independence referendum and get Scotland back on track.
Watch the speech below
Full speech text
Good morning,
I was here at Murrayfield last Saturday.
It was a day of thrills, high drama and euphoria.
And let me tell you – I reckon that today at Murrayfield will be just as exciting.
The only difference being … I’ve not had a can of Tennent’s Lager for breakfast.
I’ve spent the past year travelling to all corners of Scotland.
Speaking with people from all walks of life.
And with you, our members.
You are the beating blue heart of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party.
Without you, our members and our activists, we are nothing.
So I thank you.
I also want to thank everyone who has spoken at conference.
None more so than our leader Kemi Badenoch.
People are seeing what she is made of.
And they like what they see.
Intelligence and integrity.
Duty and decency.
Kemi looks much more like a prime minister than the actual prime minister.
Can you believe that Sir Keir Starmer is still in Downing Street?
I’ve just checked – he still is.
I can’t believe it.
Larry the Downing Street cat probably can’t believe it.
Anas Sarwar certainly can’t believe it.
Because after less than two years, Starmer’s Labour government is in a state of meltdown.
And after almost 20 years, John Swinney’s incompetent SNP government has trashed Scotland.
Kemi Badenoch regularly gives Starmer a right doing at PMQs.
There’s a good Scottish expression – a right doing.
And she’s got the measure of John Swinney too.
During Kemi’s speech yesterday, Mr Swinney’s ears must have been burning.
Conference, I’m old enough to remember devolution was sold as being ‘the best of both worlds’.
And it should be.
But look at what we’ve got.
Keir Starmer. And John Swinney.
Now, last time we met here at the home of Scottish rugby, I gave my first conference speech as Scottish Conservative leader.
You graciously tolerated my atrocious rugby jokes and puns.
But I don’t think you’ll let me get away with that again.
So I will not be making any clumsy comparison between the mesmerising, much-loved, match-winning, superstar talisman Finn Russell … and anyone with a similar name!
Back then, Kemi and I were still smarting from the 2024 general election result.
We all were.
We all knew that we had a big job on our hands to rebuild trust.
But I was confident.
I knew that we needed to remember our values, and to reconnect with them.
Our values of fairness and freedom.
Of aspiration and opportunity.
To ask ourselves this question: What is the purpose of government?
It’s to give people the skills and opportunities to thrive.
To protect us on our streets and in our homes.
To be there for when we’re sick or in genuine need.
But government should know its limits.
We believe that people, not politicians, know what is best for them and their families.
We trust people to raise their kids, to spend their own money, to behave with decency.
We believe that people should be able to enjoy the rewards of hard work.
That’s what guides me.
It’s what guides Kemi Badenoch.
It’s what makes us Conservatives.
I first stood for election in 2021 because of my anger and despair.
My anger and despair at what the SNP has done to our country.
My grown-up daughter was just a baby when the SNP came to power.
She is part of a whole generation of Scots who know nothing else.
We are at a pivotal moment with a critical Holyrood election on the 7th of May.
The prospect of five more years of the SNP is all too real.
It fills me with dread, but it also motivates me.
For the sake of Scotland, we need to get the SNP out of power.
I’d like to ask, what words would you use to describe the SNP?
Careful now, we’re being recorded.
And there are some fairly delicate live criminals proceedings …
Here’s some …
Incompetent.
Weak.
Dishonest.
Wrong. About everything.
I could go on, but there’s not a Thesaurus big enough.
I would also like to ask: What is the greatest of all the SNP’s many failures?
We could be here all day but hear me out.
Is it their trashing of Scottish education – with young people leaving school unable to read or write?
With violence and disruption rife in the classroom.
Children being brainwashed with nonsense about gender and taught to hate our own proud history.
Or is the SNP’s biggest failure the desperate state of Scotland’s NHS?
Damaged by a succession of dismal health secretaries … Nicola Sturgeon, Humza Yousaf, Michael Matheson, Neil Gray.
One in seven Scots are on a hospital waiting list.
Cancer treatment times and A&E targets year after year.
Damning statistics that don’t tell the personal stories of misery, pain and loss.
Or is the SNP’s biggest failure Scotland’s neglected and decrepit transport system?
Streets cratered with dangerous potholes.
Promises repeatedly broken to upgrade lifeline roads like the A9, A77, and A96.
The stinkingly corrupt CalMac scandal costing taxpayers almost half a billion pounds for two dodgy ferries.
If John Swinney got out of his chauffeur-driven government limo he’d see the reality for Scotland’s long-suffering commuters.
Or is the SNP’s biggest failure Scotland’s justice system?
Victims and witnesses traumatised by chronic court delays and thousands of prisoners freed early.
Police officers exhausted and disillusioned. The thin blue line stretched to breaking point.
Gangsters flaunting, with impunity, their vast, dirty profits made from Scotland’s record drugs deaths.
Education, NHS, transport, justice.
The list of SNP failures is breath-taking.
It is obscene.
It is a tragedy for Scotland.
But the SNP are not just incapable of delivery.
They are ideologically hidebound.
Blinded by their own flawed beliefs.
And blinkered to contrary evidence and hard facts.
Cult-like, they have always worshiped at the altar of independence.
And they now have a new faith-based conviction – gender identity.
How much time and energy is wasted on their pretence that men can magically transform into women just by saying so?
The SNP, backed by Labour and the Lib Dems, passed Nicola Sturgeon’s ridiculous gender self-ID law.
It was our party who called this out.
It was our party who said, ‘enough of the nonsense’.
Thank you Alister Jack, and Kemi Badenoch.
That’s Conservative common-sense.
The Supreme Court has since vindicated our position.
But despite the court’s clarity, ordinary women still pay the price.
Just ask Sandie Peggie, a Fife nurse targeted by NHS managers for refusing to change alongside a male doctor.
We also remain the only party that can be trusted to protect our fundamental right of free speech.
Do you remember when Police Scotland unleashed the ‘Hate Monster’?
The Hate Monster was a product of Humza Yousaf’s Hate Crime Act.
A truly ludicrous character … the Hate Monster (well, and Humza too).
This spurious law stifles free speech and encourages vexatious police complaints about words causing hurt feelings.
Police Scotland still records ‘non crime hate incidents’ …
As my colleague Murdo Fraser knows after he cracked a harmless joke.
Humza’s hate crime law was yet another example of the SNP’s wrong priorities.
Here’s another.
They find £2million of taxpayers’ money to give every asylum seeker in Scotland a free bus pass.
And at the same time, they dither over taking a free bus pass from a thug who killed bus driver Keith Rollinson.
But conference, steel yourselves.
Because I’m going to tell you where the SNP are really, really, really wrong.
John Swinney, Humza Yousaf, Nicola Sturgeon.
All wrong. And the rest of them.
The only thing they truly care about is breaking up our United Kingdom – the greatest nation on earth.
The SNP have never accepted our decisive referendum victory of 2014.
They have never respected our polite but firm ‘no thanks’.
They have never focused on the day job.
Their obsession has cost Scotland dearly.
They use Holyrood as a platform to peddle petty grievances and to stoke division with the rest of the UK.
Don’t be fooled by the experts who tell you that independence is no longer a threat.
Because John Swinney is going into this election with one goal and one goal only.
And it’s the same goal that he has always had.
And that is to secure another vote on breaking the bonds of our country.
Just yesterday he said that, and I quote, “independence is now within reach”.
John Swinney and Nicola Sturgeon have always put their party’s interests ahead of what’s right for Scotland.
The Scottish Conservative & Unionist party will strain every sinew to stop them.
A question I often get asked is how do the SNP get away with it?
It’s partly because they shirk accountability by pretending they’re in opposition.
They blame the UK government for their problems.
They manufacture disputes with the UK government.
They needlessly diverge from the UK government.
I’ll give you an example.
NHS patients elsewhere in the UK have access to a free app to book appointments, order prescriptions and get medical help …
But Scottish patients are stuck in the analogue age – because the narrow-minded SNP rejected a UK-wide app.
Only a few weeks ago, John Swinney was bleating about another phoney slight.
He complained that he wasn’t briefed about a UK-US military operation against a sanction-busting oil tanker linked to Putin’s murderous regime.
Any excuse for manufacturing a row with the UK government.
Exhausting. Distracting. Pathetic.
Stop whingeing, Mr Swinney.
Get on with the day job.
The SNP’s incompetence and refusal to focus on the right things angers me.
Their secrecy and stoking of division appal me.
Their cover-up culture disgusts me.
Right now, Scotland’s information commissioner is taking John Swinney’s government to court.
That’s because the SNP refuses to release documents relating to the government’s probe into Alex Salmond.
What do the SNP have to hide?
Release the Sturgeon files.
Talking of hiding, and mindful of live criminal proceedings, how do you go about hiding a gigantic campervan? Allegedly.
The SNP’s toxic culture has contaminated Scotland’s public sector.
A fish rots from the head down.
Look at the scandal of the Lord Advocate tipping off John Swinney about a serious criminal case against Nicola Sturgeon’s husband.
The public were kept in the dark.
While this information gave the SNP political advantage.
This Lord Advocate was appointed to the SNP government by Nicola Sturgeon and was kept in post by John Swinney.
In the real world, people can see that this smacks of corruption and I will not be afraid to say so.
That’s why Kemi and I will work together to end the perverse conflict of interest created by the Lord Advocate’s dual role.
For years, Glasgow’s NHS board denied links between patient deaths at Queen Elizabeth University hospital and contaminated water.
They bullied whistleblowers.
Deceived grieving families.
Offered bribes of cash and trips to Disneyland.
Caused years of distress and heartache.
Only towards the end of a £30 million public inquiry did they start telling the truth.
Thirty million pounds of your cash wasted on lawyers.
It should have been spent on frontline care if only the health board had not adopted the SNP’s culture of secrecy.
The SNP’s instinct to lie and to cover-up is costing us dear.
They boasted that more than half of Scots pay less income tax than they would if they worked in England. Not true.
That Scotland has the greatest potential for wind power in Europe. Not true.
In fact, you can safely assume that anything the SNP says about energy is not true.
In 2014, their independence campaign was based on fantasy estimates about the price of oil.
They’re now spinning a new big lie about energy.
Cheap renewable energy will cut bills by a third, they claim.
But ask them for evidence and they go quiet.
Because there isn’t any evidence. Because it is not true.
It is the latest big lie from the SNP.
SNP ministers routinely mislead the public – but John Swinney gives them a free pass.
In recent times there was a minister who misrepresented an expert on grooming gangs.
A minister who abused taxpayer-funded limos to go to the football.
A minister who lied about a £11,000 iPad data charge.
None of them sacked.
The SNP’s instinct is always to circle the wagons, to deny, to double down, and treat the public with contempt.
We’ve had nearly 20 years of this.
Yet we appear to have become numb to it all.
Numbed by the waste, the incompetence, the lies.
Enough is enough.
The SNP are eroding trust in Scottish politics.
People look at Holyrood and see an expensive talking shop.
A place which has been dominated by out-of-touch left-wing parties.
People are disillusioned.
I get that, I truly do.
But I know – as you do – that Reform UK are not the answer.
They have no core values or fixed principles.
They won’t tell us their policies or how they’ll deliver them.
They don’t even want you to know who their candidates are.
So what do we know about Nigel Farage and Lord Offord, the man he appointed as their leader in Scotland?
We know they’re happy to have pro-independence candidates.
We know they’re relaxed about another independence referendum.
Lord Offord has even given the SNP a road map to break up the United Kingdom.
And Reform politicians have the nerve to drape themselves in the Union Flag and say they’re a Unionist party.
Aye, right!
But conference, are you really surprised? I’m not.
It would be no surprise if Nigel Farage one day came out and overtly backed Scottish independence.
They are not a true Unionist party and never will be.
The Union is not in their DNA as it is in ours.
They’ll not fight to save the UK, as we did before, during and after the 2014 referendum.
Reform are populists and opportunists, no different to the SNP.
Pretending to be all things to all people.
Shifting position like the weather.
Saying whatever is convenient, depending on who’s listening at the time.
What’s their answer to the SNP’s bloated benefits bill?
They don’t want to cut it.
They will pretend – like all the other parties – that it can keep getting bigger and bigger.
My goodness, Reform even supports the nationalisation of some industries.
Does that sound conservative to you?
Reform are a one-man band with no real values, vision or policies.
They promise easy fixes to complex problems – soundbites instead of solutions.
In it for themselves, not for their country.
What Holyrood needs is the only party with a track record of taking the fight to the SNP.
A sensible and serious party with common sense policies.
And that’s us. The Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
In Scotland, Labour have never lost their sense of entitlement.
Cheered on by the commentator class, a misguided arrogance that they deserve to rule by default.
Labour often back the SNP at Holyrood.
Anas Sarwar keeps falling into line behind John Swinney.
On gender.
On hate crime.
On sky-high taxes.
That’s because Labour’s politics are almost identical to the SNP’s.
They’re part of Holyrood’s left-wing blob that blocks progress.
Can you imagine a Labour government getting a grip on the SNP’s benefits bill?
No. They can’t and they won’t.
Trade unions snap their fingers to get inflation-busting pay deals from the SNP.
Can you imagine Labour being any different?
Can you imagine them taking bold action to fix Scotland’s problems?
Labour used to talk about change.
But just look at the change they’ve delivered in the form of Keir Starmer’s disastrous government.
15 major U-turns and counting.
Even Sarwar knows Starmer is a dud. Anas, what took you so long to realise?
Labour cannot and will not deliver the change we need in Scotland.
They don’t have the people.
They don’t have the answers.
They don’t have the strength.
Conference, one of the worst days of my brief political career was when a taxi driver mistook me for Alex Cole-Hamilton.
A deeply troubling moment.
The Lib Dems like to present a cuddly and wholesome public image.
But don’t be fooled.
In recent weeks, they’ve backed the SNP’s high tax budget.
They did exactly the same thing last year.
They do so because it’s patently obvious that they’re desperate to get into government with John Swinney.
Alex Cole-Hamilton’s love-bombing of John Swinney is the worst kept secret in Scottish politics.
Whatever the Lib Dem leader says, you can’t trust a word he says.
If John Swinney spurns Mr Cole-Hamilton, there’s always the ghoulish Greens.
Holyrood’s presiding officer once told me off for describing them as ‘dangerous fanatics’.
So I called them ‘dangerous cranks’ instead.
She still wasn’t happy.
Wine bar revolutionaries, poisoned by the politics of envy.
A party that would scare off entrepreneurs who create jobs.
But welcome every single illegal immigrant.
That wants to legalise heroin and cocaine.
And would drag Scotland out of the UK and out of NATO.
Fanatics, cranks and extremists.
Dangerous and unfit to govern.
Yet John Swinney and Nicola Sturgeon welcomed them into their government.
It was called the Bute House Agreement and it was a disaster.
Ending it was the only useful thing that Humza Yousaf has ever done.
But – terrifyingly – they want to do it all over again.
If you thought the ‘Bute House Agreement’ was a horror movie, just wait until ‘Bute House 2: The Nightmare Returns’.
Because it would be a nightmare for workers, for women, for families, for drivers, for businesses, for the oil and gas industry … for Scotland.
When I addressed you here last year, I set out our common-sense blueprint.
I talked about securing better value for hard-pressed taxpayers.
Ending wasteful spending and cutting red tape.
Shutting quangos that only deliver pro SNP lines.
Fixing public appointment rules to end SNP cronyism.
I talked about reducing the core civil service to levels that were quite adequate a decade ago.
I set out how reducing benefits would give tax cuts for families.
These cuts would also support businesses to grow, to create jobs and boost the economy.
We need to reduce the benefits bill.
That obvious truth should not be a controversial thing to say.
But we are the only party saying it.
Of course we value social security for those in genuine need.
But Scotland simply cannot afford to spend £10 billion pounds a year on benefits.
And that’s where the SNP is heading.
That’s over £27 million pounds of taxpayers’ cash going out the door.
Every single day.
In my speech last year, I talked about scrapping the SNP’s foolish fixation of Net Zero by 2045.
They would make us all poorer by chasing a target that we know is not affordable.
Last year, I told how we proudly support our oil and gas industry.
We still do, while the SNP and Labour betray these workers.
We also back clean and green new nuclear power.
And we support those fighting against mass industrialisation in their beautiful corners of Scotland.
The mega pylons, solar farms and vast battery storage plants.
Last year I also talked about shorter waits for GP appointments and hospital treatment.
I talked about education and the urgent need to reverse the decline in our schools. And to restore order and safety in classrooms.
However, since last year, all of these problems have not improved.
They have in fact only got worse under the SNP and Labour.
But we refuse to sit idly by.
We have been working hard to turn the vision I set out then into a common-sense range of policies now.
Not sniping, but solutions.
With the Scottish parliament election in 75 days’ time, I will guarantee you this:
The Scottish Conservative manifesto will be the only one to honestly address the problems that our country faces.
The only one that will tackle them head on with smart, credible and affordable policies.
Let me share some of these ideas today.
We have already announced some fantastic ideas in recent weeks and at conference.
The magnificent Miles Briggs published our plan to fix Scottish education.
We would scrap the SNP’s failing Curriculum for Excellence and replace it with a knowledge-based Curriculum for Aspiration.
We would restore order and ban phones in the classroom, so that pupils can learn in safety.
The superb Sue Webber has set out how we’d fix Scotland’s roads.
This includes the most ambitious plan since devolution to upgrade Scotland’s trunk roads and create a new national pothole fund.
The marvellous Meghan Gallacher unveiled our plan to solve the SNP’s housing crisis.
We would rip up red tape for housebuilders and scrap the unfair tax on buying a home.
The awesome Alexander Stewart set out how we’d tackle the SNP’s bloated benefits bill.
Our plan would save taxpayers over £1 billion.
And we would use that money to cut your taxes and lower bills.
Because the SNP have made Scotland the highest taxed part of the UK.
Their income tax rises cost Scots £1.8 billion more each year.
Middle-income Scots are forced to pay £1,500 a year more than colleagues elsewhere in the UK.
This money is taken from people’s wages when they’re already struggling to make ends meet.
We want to put that right.
We would ensure that more people are taken out of paying income tax altogether.
And we would cut income tax to 19 pence in the pound for lower and middle income earners.
Our tax cuts would help lower people’s bills by allowing everyone to keep more of their hard-earned money.
You’ll often hear me talking about taxpayers’ money.
That’s because I know, as you do, that money spent by government comes from taxpayers.
The other parties think that it appears by magic.
And that is why I am very excited to share with you today our new policy that would return taxes to hard-pressed taxpayers.
You will know that the Scottish Government is legally obliged to balance its budget each year.
Thankfully, they are not allowed to overspend.
This means that the Scottish government has surplus money every single year.
And what happens with that big pot of unspent cash?
Well, it goes into the following year’s budget, where John Swinney gets to spend it on his priorities …
Such as yet more pro-independence propaganda.
We believe that should change.
Today, I can announce that we would turn the Scottish government’s annual underspend into a taxpayer dividend.
A rebate for every hard-working taxpayer.
A Conservative cashback to help people with their bills.
Based on last year’s underspend, this surplus would provide every household in Scotland with an estimated £200 dividend.
This is taxpayers’ money. It is your money.
It does not belong to John Swinney.
I say it with pride and conviction:
We want to cut tax while the SNP are always trying to find new ways to snatch your cash.
So, all other parties stand for higher benefits spending paid for with higher taxes.
That’s what all of the independent financial experts are saying.
We will always tell the truth.
The Scottish Conservatives stand for reducing the benefits bill to cut your taxes.
And we will return unspent taxes to taxpayers.
We have strong and sensible policies solidly rooted in our shared Conservative values.
Ambitious policies to give people hope.
Because hope is in short supply in Scotland right now.
And we all know why:
• The SNP are serially incompetent and dishonest.
• Reform is NOT a unionist party. Standing for nothing but themselves.
• Labour are weak and share the SNP’s damaging politics.
• The Lib Dems actively support the SNP.
• And the Greens are deranged.
Conference, we are the only party in Scotland who have the right values, the right ideas and the right people.
What are we in it for?
What am I in it for?
We are in it to make a difference.
I’m in it because I care about our communities and our country.
We want a Scotland based on our values:
Fairness, freedom, opportunity.
That’s what motivates me.
I’m not a career politician like John Swinney or Anas Sarwar.
Like most of you, I worked in the real world.
As a journalist, I stood up to organised crime.
And I stood up for ordinary, decent people.
I exposed wrongdoing and gave voice to the powerless.
I still do.
I see Holyrood as a means to an end, not as a comfortable career.
I’m frustrated by how out of touch it is.
Scottish Conservatives stand up for Scotland.
We stand up to the SNP and their little helpers of every colour.
It is a job that we take seriously because it is a job that no-one else is willing to do.
No-one else is standing up for the values that we believe in.
No-one else has common-sense policies that many Scots agree with, whether they’ve voted for us or not.
Holyrood needs a strong Scottish Conservative voice like never before.
Without one, the parliament will keep turning its back on swathes of the country it’s supposed to serve.
So we are going to fight.
I am going to fight with everything that I have.
Our dynamic Scottish Conservative MSPs, MPs and councillors are committed, industrious, and connected to their communities.
They’re on the side of ordinary, hard-working Scots.
And in this election, we are going to get out there and show people that someone’s got their back.
We’ve got their back.
We are going to fight for the people who do the right thing.
Getting up and going to work.
Doing the very best for their families.
But who feel they’re getting nowhere.
Hundreds of thousands of Scots see that the system isn’t working.
People who want a return to basic common sense.
We are going to give people a voice right across Scotland.
On May the 7th, the second of your two votes – the peach ballot paper – is your secret weapon.
It is the smart way to stop the SNP across the country.
To stop John Swinney from winning a majority he says will lead to a referendum.
To stop the SNP-Green horror show of Bute House 2.
To stop the phoney Unionists of Reform helping the SNP get back in.
The election is 75 days away.
The real work starts now.
We’ve turned our values and vision into a plan for a better Scotland.
A victory for John Swinney would extend SNP rule at Holyrood to nearly a quarter of a century.
It would mean five more years of the same failed approach:
Five more years of secrecy and evasion, dishonesty and deceit.
Relentless demands for an independence referendum.
Trapping us on the same downward spiral.
Higher taxes, higher benefits, low growth, declining public services.
Paying more, getting less.
Hitched to the Greens, nothing will be considered too extreme.
Neither Labour nor the Lib Dems will oppose them.
They’re just too weak.
They’ve failed before and they’ll keep failing.
They are part of the problem.
So that leaves us.
The Scottish Conservatives are the voice of common sense.
We are the voice for ordinary, decent, hard-working Scots who dread five more years of the same.
That’s why I make this promise to you here today.
We are going to give the next 75 days everything we’ve got.
We are going to fight for every vote.
We are going to stop the SNP.
And we have the common-sense plans to get Scotland back on track.
ENDS
