Russell Findlay: Everywhere you look, Scotland is worse off than it was 18 years ago

It’s been an eventful year inside the dark recesses of Edinburgh’s concrete bunker (more commonly known as the Scottish Parliament). We’ve had the usual drama and debate within the Holyrood chamber and committee rooms – sometimes insightful, occasionally entertaining, often pure tedium.

But a great deal of what happened in 2025 should be seen in the context of the Scottish election which is now just eight months away and will be critical in shaping Scotland’s future.

In that time, we’ve experienced the first full year since the ‘loveless landslide’ which delivered Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government.

And it’s been almost a year since I became leader of the Scottish Conservatives. It’s not a job that I would have imagined doing in my past life.

I’m 52 years old and spent decades toiling as a journalist, much of it investigating the scale and reach of organised crime, and safely away from the public eye.

My job also involved prodding Scotland’s myriad state agencies which over the past decades seem to have become increasingly addicted to secrecy and impervious to meaningful accountability. As a newspaper hack, I stood up for ordinary people who suffered injustice, and I’ve continued doing so since becoming an MSP four years ago. So many MSPs fail to deploy, or even appreciate, the power they have to rattle cages and make a real difference to individual lives.

Since being elected party leader at the end of September, one of my main jobs is taking John Swinney to task at First Minister’s Questions. In over 30 outings, I’ve put more than 120 questions to him but have yet to receive a straight answer.

Like many careerists, Swinney is a master at droning on at great length while sounding vaguely authoritative… yet saying absolutely zilch of substance or interest. It’s an incredible ‘skill’, but one which understandably repels and infuriates the paying public.

One word that sums up FMQs, or any form of contact with SNP ministers for that matter, is ‘frustration’. Just like his old boss Nicola Sturgeon, Swinney is frankly incapable of admitting the scale of the damage the SNP is doing to our great country.

The past year has also served as a reminder about how political fortunes can change so fast. In the relentless social media age, the old maxim about ‘a week being a long time in politics’ should be recalibrated to a day, or maybe even an hour.

Remember how Labour oozed confidence after the general election victory, arrogantly assuming that a matching Holyrood win was in the bag? And remember how the pundits decided that having lost 38 MPs, the SNP were toast with the threat of ‘independence’ dead in the water?

Spoiler alert – don’t be naïve, breaking up the UK is all the SNP really care about. With the 2026 election looming, none of this looks quite as settled.

Having swiped pensioners’ winter fuel payments, the UK Labour government is trashing the economy with a National Insurance rise (essentially a jobs tax). Their family farm tax exposes their disrespect for rural Britain, disregard for food security and economic illiteracy.

In Scotland, we have become wearily accustomed to such high-tax socialism, rooted in the politics of envy. The SNP keep hiking taxes while public services get worse and infrastructure (physical and digital) crumbles.

To distract, they reach for the big ‘INDEPENDENCE’ button, promising to deliver a Caledonian nirvana while lying about the catastrophic economic reality of their small-minded obsession.

I firmly believe that this time of turmoil presents an opportunity for the Scottish Conservatives. We need to understand that many scunnered voters are not yet willing to give us the time of day – let alone their vote.

Which is why we must hold our hands up and be completely honest about where we’ve got things wrong. Because for the good of Scotland, the more Scottish Conservative MSPs the better.

At Holyrood, every other party represents a failed left-wing consensus that gave us the highest taxes in the UK and public services at breaking point.

This stale thinking resulted in policies like gender self-ID, which denies biological reality, and a hate crime law that stifles free speech.

So often, daft policies are either unworkable or subject to U-turn following public backlash. We see this with Labour’s partial and belated winter fuel reversal and the SNP’s ditching of its flagship National Care Service blueprint.

The high taxes and wasteful spending of these two left-wing governments suppress economic growth which costs jobs and hits household budgets.

Shameless opportunist Nigel Farage’s is no different to the SNP. They both dishonestly promise seductively simple answers to complex problems – while pointing the finger of blame at some bogeyman lurking in the shadows.

I was appalled to hear Farage nonchalantly admit that he’d be okay with another SNP government. Maybe that’s because he doesn’t live here. Meanwhile, Reform’s public spending plans are so barmy that they’d make Jeremy Corbyn blush.

At Holyrood, only the Scottish Conservatives consistently stand up to the harmful collection of left-wing parties and unapologetically fight for fair taxes.

Everywhere you look, Scotland is worse off than it was 18 years ago. Potholes scar the roads while bins overflow and the streets are filthy. Shops are shuttered while street gangs cause fear and alarm. Organised crime gangs profit from the worst drug death rate in Europe.

Jobs have been hit by Labour’s National Insurance tax hike and the SNP’s refusal to pass on money that should give Scottish business a level playing field.

Our schools, once a source of pride, are in a miserable spiral of decline while classroom discipline has collapsed, putting pupils and teachers at risk.

In the NHS, doctors and nurses are run ragged. The GP crisis causes delays to treatments which then leads to worse outcomes for patients and greater cost to taxpayers.

The unrealistic and unaffordable net zero plans of Labour and the SNP have been a hammer blow to Scotland’s world-leading energy sector. Their ideological hostility to oil and gas is now costing 400 jobs per fortnight.

Our country cannot afford more dismal decades of stagnation. Change must come.

The shared left-wing agenda of the SNP, Labour and the other Holyrood parties is ‘progressive’ if that progress is downwards. Little wonder that around half of the SNP’s sitting MSPs are standing down.

I believe Scotland’s had enough of miserable, managed decline, and the apathy and mediocrity that the Holyrood establishment bathes in. The Scottish Conservatives embrace aspiration, ambition and excellence. We want hard work to be rewarded and for the state to stop meddling in people’s lives.

I’m acutely aware that we have a big job to win back trust and that it won’t happen overnight. But I have confidence in the enduring appeal of our core values. I’m also optimistic about the future and pragmatic about what needs to change. Our party has upset the odds before.

We’ve held seats like Aberdeenshire West, Dumfriesshire, Eastwood, Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire and Galloway and West Dumfries more than once already. And I believe that next year we can take on and defeat the SNP in more constituencies.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party. I’m hugely conscious of the privilege and responsibility of leading the party, but also of the opportunities. Because I’m convinced that only we represent the interests of mainstream Scotland and have put forward a positive vision for change.

We’re facing a nationalist party that is wrecking Scotland and a socialist party that is wrecking Britain. We’re up against a Holyrood blob in thrall to economically illiterate policies.

We have a programme that no other party is offering. A promise of change, rooted in common-sense Conservative values. The type of common sense which chimes instinctively with the interests of Scots from all walks of life.