WE CHERISH WORKERS BY REWARDING AMBITION

YOU don’t have to go far in my patch in Glasgow to speak to people who will still tell you: ‘ Maggie helped my parents buy their house.’ Nearly, 40 years on, the right to buy remains a totemic policy.

It was a policy which, l i terally, opened the door to one of the most natural instincts anyone can have – to own your home.

The right to buy was seized by millions of people across Britain. But what’s interesting is that take-up of the scheme was particularly high here in Scotland.

Why? Possibly because it tapped into something very distinct about our national character.

That desire to take responsibility for yourself, to polish your own front step, to look after your own front yard in the knowledge that, in so doing, you’re looking after your community too – all of us know that’s as intrinsic to Scotland as Tunnocks and Irn-Bru.

I suspect, therefore, I wasn’t alone i n welcoming David Cameron’s announcement yesterday that he wants to bring the right to buy back for people living in housing association property. It’s a plan that offers up the dream of home ownership for more than a million people.

But, because of that, I suspect I’m not the only one disappointed to know that this policy won’t apply here in Scotland. Housing matters are for Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish Government. And, last year, as a good Leftwing ideologue, Miss Sturgeon decreed that right-to-buy be abolished.

I will have plenty of opportunities to challenge the SNP over the coming weeks on why they reject a scheme to help people buy their own homes, and funds to build more social housing to help future generations. But for now, I am struck by the bitter irony contained in this situation.

For here we have an SNP Government that likes to think of itself as the guardian of the Scottish national will, preventing a policy being implemented in Scotland which, I feel confident, would be grasped with both hands by hundreds of thousands of those self- same Scottish voters.

It gets to the nub of one of the fault lines within the SNP and, for that matter, Scottish Labour. Because, for all of their rhetoric about representing the working man and woman in Scotland, the truth is that they have always been out of kilter with that claim.

T HEIR brand of we-knowbest big government, their attack on the virtues of free enterprise and property ownership in Scotland simply goes against the grain of our history.

That history has always been one that enshrines and celebrates the virtues of self-help, of hard work, and personal responsibility.

It was Scottish banks which, centuries ago, pioneered a trusted and steadfast method for finding capital so that free enterprise could flourish.

It was Scottish entrepreneurs who, along with their compatriots in northern English cities, p o we re d the industrial revolution.

It was our Scots ancestors who knew that time was not to be frittered away – but seized and made the most of. Call it a Protestant work ethic, call it an instinct for self-help; it is what ensured Scotland always was more than the sum of its parts.

Self-help, personal responsibility: these are words ingrained in the Scottish consciousness.

The good news for me as a Conservative is that, as I go around the country in this campaign, I sense that this character is still as strong as ever.

Take the debate on how we reform welfare. My view is that we need to create a new welfare state that refuses to simply leave people trapped in a life on benefits and instead gives them a route back into work.

As part of that, we believe in capping benefits so that no one gets more than the average wage. That way we’ll incentivise people back into a job.

Despite the yowls of outrage from the SNP and Labour, a poll at the weekend f ound that around two- thirds of Scots agree. People understand there is a moral case for getting people off benefits and back into work, both for their own self-worth and for the wider economy.

Or take education. Again, I just don’t see why it is that only local authorities have the God-given right to be in charge of our schools. Presumably, a modern Robert Owen, the man who created New Lanark’s remarkable education l egacy, would these days be patted on the head and told he didn’t have the right qualifications.

Again, I sense that people aren’t satisfied. Parents I have met aren’t prepared to sit politely and take the one- sizefits all education their local authorities are offering. They want to take responsibility. They want to help themselves, their families, and their communities.

And, most of all, take our tax regime. Listening to the synthetic rage of our opponents over our plans to reduce tax would be to assume they think the money we want to return to taxpayers is theirs.

I take a different view. And I also sense that Scots have had enough too. When you’ve worked hard, played by the rules and done the right thing by your family, governments need to be the ones providing good reasons for asking for your money.

Scotland has never advocated a ‘greed is good’ mantra. We are a country with a strong sense of society and community. It’s something that makes the country special.

The mistake, however, has been to confuse that Scottish sense of shared responsibility with a belief that it can only be exercised through the l evers of government.

It’s a logic that would have seemed absurd to the great Scottish thinkers of our past who, I suspect, would despair at the way big government has tried to crush the spark of ingenuity and creativity in some of Scotland’s towns and cities.

A S usual, while the better off will always find a way to cope, it is the poorest in society who suffer the most. Scotland’s complacent Left-wing establishment needs to remember our culture: one that enshrines hard work, just reward and self-help.

The difference between Left and Right is that Labour and the SNP simply want to make the rich poorer, whereas the Conservatives want to make the poor better off – i mproving schools, i ncreasing college places, creating jobs and helping people own their own home.

We want to do this so that everyone in Scotland can fulfil that most basic of desires – to ensure your children have a better chance in life that you did. That’s the Scottish way.