Ruth: Tories can f inish 2nd

RUTH Davidson has urged voters to make the Conservatives the second largest party at Holyrood, saying she ‘stands ready to serve’ as leader of the opposition.

The Scottish Tory leader said if people did not want to change the government in Edinburgh, they should call time on Labour’s role as the main opposition, which it has held since 007.

She made the plea after a YouGov poll put her party one point ahead of Labour at

0 per cent in the constituency vote and neck-and-neck in the regional list.

Miss Davidson told the Murnaghan show on Sky News that for nine years she had ‘watched the official opposition, the Labour Party, not lay a glove on the SNP’.

She added: ‘They’re shambolic, they’ve not been tremendously competent.

‘I think something in Scotland needs to change and if the voters of Scotland choose not to change the government of Scotland, I think they should change the opposition and I stand ready to serve.’

The Conservatives – whose best return at Holyrood has been 18 MSPs – are ‘on course’ to achieve a record result on May 5, Miss Davidson added. She said: ‘I charged my team, all the people who are working with me, to go out and get us the best Scottish Conservative result we have ever had in the history of devolution.’

Miss Davidson said she was ready to make a ‘strong contribution’ in the next parliament, not least on the question of a second independence referendum. She said: ‘I will speak for the two million votes in Scotland that said, “No thank you, we want to remain part of the United Kingdom”.’ The MSP also insisted voters are ‘smart enough’ to cope with a referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU in June after Nicola Sturgeon warned it would be disrespectful to hold it so soon after the Holyrood election.

A Scottish Labour spokesman said: ‘Ruth Davidson wants people to believe she is a modern Tory but her support for the SNP’s hundreds of millions of pounds of cuts to schools and other vital public services is straight out of the 1980s.’