Tory contender wants to lead a ‘blue collar revolution’ in Scottish ranks
Scottish Tory leadership contender Michelle Ballantyne has revealed that after entering the race to prevent a “coronation” of her competitor Jackson Carlaw, she now wants to win to revolutionise her party and Scottish politics.
Ms Ballantyne, who has been an MSP for two-and-a-half years, said she wants to galvanise her party’s membership to create a “blue collar revolution” in Scottish voters.
She said the Scottish Government was too focused on “quick wins” and, as a result, had too many failing policies, that “politician on politician” attacks were a smokescreen to avoid scrutiny, and that Holyrood needed to be “braver in doing the right thing rather than the immediately popular thing”.
Ms Ballantyne, who was criticised for her support of Boris Johnson in last year’s UK Tory leadership contest – a stance that put her at odds with Ruth Davidson – also said she still believed he was “the right man at the right time”, and that Brexit would be a success and deliver for Scotland.
The 57-year-old mother-ofsix, whose career has taken her from nursing and health management to running a manufacturing business, was a last-minute candidate in the Scottish Conservative race to replace Ms Davidson on a permanent basis after unexpectedly winning more than 100 nominations. Jackson Carlaw has been interim leader and led the party through the general election when it saw its MPS fall from 13 to six.
“I never came into this thinking I’m definitely going to win,” she said. “It’s borne out of frustration and a belief things should be done properly. Leaders need to have mandates, either because you’re a natural leader and everyone follows or you go through the process.
“It really was about not having a coronation. I was just trying to spur debate and to stop people just rolling over and doing nothing. There’s a lot of things that need to change – not just how the party needs to change, but how in Scotland we deal with social services, the health service, the police.”
She added: “I do want us to behave differently, to engage differently. If you get the process right, you get really good decisions, decisions which are sense-checked. That’s one of the problems with a lot of stuff that’s done here [at Holyrood]. It’s not properly sensechecked, so when someone tries to deliver it on the ground it doesn’t stack up.
“In my time here nearly every major decision made by this Government doesn’t sensecheck well on the ground, so
I think I can bring something very different and that is making sure decision-making is of a high quality and that the policy base that we put out is one that anybody, regardless of political affiliations, will say ‘I understand how that will make a difference to me, to my clients, to my family’s life’.”
Ms Ballantyne said she felt compelled to move into politics after seeing “virtue signalling, but no action” from the SNP while she worked for the Scottish Borders drug and alcohol counselling project.
“I came to give evidence to a committee on drug and alcohol problems and I came out of here [Holyrood] bouncing that they were really going to tackle the problems, but they didn’t do the big things, didn’t take it head on and deal with it,” she said.
“I was also on the GIRFEC implementation team in the Borders when Named Person came through and we had given clear evidence and commentary that the principle was good, but we clearly told them not to legislate because it wouldn’t work, but they ignored us. They took a good idea and destroyed it”
She is a traditional Conservative on tax and on public spending saying “there’s an assumption that you have to pour money into something to make it better – that’s fundamentally not true”.
Ms Ballantyne said her background in public, private and voluntary sectors had proved that to her. But she’s further to the right than Mr Carlaw on Brexit. He was a Remainer, she is a Boris-backing Leaver. Is she concerned that her support for the PM will be used against her should she win?
“I’ve always considered myself a good judge of character and I believe in being honest,” she said. “For me, it’s a tenet of the kind of person you are, so I wasn’t going to hide from the fact I thought Boris would be the best leader.” Asked if she thinks she’s an honest person of good character, she added:
“I may not agree with some of his personal choices, but does that make him not the right person? If I sat here and said people should not have sex before marriage, they should get married and keep the family unit together for the rest of their lives, I would be accused of being a Victorian moraliser, and be told that’s not the way the world works now and if marriage doesn’t work out you move on – but Boris appears in that and everyone screams outrage.
“Boris never talks about his personal life and I respect his right to do that and I make no judgements about his personal life. I judge him on how he behaves as a politician and his aspirations for the country.”
So what about the proroguing of Parliament? “We can debate that ‘til we’re blue in the face, but to me it doesn’t say anything about whether he’s the right person to be PM,” she said. “And he has the mandate.”
She is also robust in her defence of Brexit. “I don’t think it will be a disaster,” she said. “We will make the right decisions for the country and it will be a success.
“I own a manufacturing company and we do export and deal with people all over the world, so I’m not just talking about it in a vague sense. I’m coming at it with a degree of knowledge and I spent a long time looking at the implications.
“I’ve noticed that south of the Border people are moving on, but here, because the SNP are so bogged down in it because they see it as way to gain leverage over independence, nobody is moving on. The circumstances at the time of the vote were that all the leaders at the time supported Remain. Had half the leaders supported the other position, I suspect the vote in Scotland would have changed.”
Ballantyne feels she has been “pigeon-holed” for not only her Johnson support, but for a lack of empathy. “Your opponents think if they can get you pigeon-holed they can create an image and then nothing you say will be listened to afterwards, and the problem with that is it makes for very poor politics and decision making,” she said.
Ballantyne said her political mantra was “prevention is better than cure”, but that does not lead to “an overnight fix”. “We, as politicians, have a duty to be much braver about making decisions,” she said.
“I do want us to behave differently, to engage differently. If you get the process right, you get really good decisions”
MICHELLE BALLANTYNE