Analysis: Tories deliver best result
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Just last month ago Douglas Ross found himself facing plunging polls and the accepted logic that the Labour party would replace the Scottish Conservatives as the opposition.
His campaign was labelled divisive and dull, and he spent the debates either apologising for his own historic remarks or having to defend the latest misstep of a Prime Minister seemingly determined to make his colleagues' job as hard as possible.
Ruth Davidson was all over the leaflets, we heard it wasn’t even his campaign, and everyone questioned why the Tories went so hard on stopping independence, rather than focusing on their own domestic vision. But it worked. Everyone was wrong and it worked. Like “Get Brexit done”, this was another Tory campaign saved by three magic words: “Stop Indyref 2”.
The Scottish Tories have matched their best ever election result, with Mr Ross claiming they even got 100,000 more votes.
While admittedly suffering two losses in the constituency vote, the list has seen them hold the line as voters from other parties supported them despite an apparent lack of shared domestic sensibilities.
One Tory source put the result down to “message discipline”, while others praised Mr Ross’s “toughness” as well as the team around him. Rather than promise gradual change or pretend they were the next Government, the Scottish Tories made stopping another referendum the focal point, tackling the SNP head on.