WE’LL TAKE WRECKING BALL TO THE YELLOW WALL

Ross unveils ambitious plan to widen party’s appeal

A FIVE-year plan to break through the ‘yellow wall’ and oust the SNP has been launched by the Scottish Conservatives.

Leader Douglas Ross has today set out an ambitious strategy to persuade ‘working Scotland’ to back his party.

He believes the plan, alongside efforts to win the votes of middle-class Scotland, can help remove Nationalist MSPs across swathes of the Central Belt, which have become SNP strongholds in the past 14 years.

It comes ahead of today’s first sitting of the Scottish parliament since the election, where the Tories exceeded expectations by achieving their best-ever Holyrood result, gaining an extra 100,000 votes on the regional list compared with 2016 and winning 31 seats.

Mr Ross wants to widen his party’s appeal by making it ‘more than the party of “no to the SNP and Indyref 2”’.

He also wants to become a credible government-in-waiting between now and the next Holyrood election, scheduled for 2026.

Writing in today’s Mail, Mr Ross says: ‘The Scottish Conservatives are the only party capable of building and delivering a five-year strategy to remove the SNP.’

He adds that the party ‘will not shirk away from taking on the SNP’ and knows ‘what we need to do to break the yellow wall’.

The Scottish Conservative campaign in the run-up to last week’s election was dominated by its push to persuade voters to back the

‘We won’t shirk from taking on the SNP’

party on the regional list ballot paper to deny the SNP a majority and stop Indyref 2.

Tory strategists say their successes in recent years have largely been down to attracting pro-Union voters in working class neighbourhoods which were once Labour strongholds. They will now focus on a range of policies which can appeal to working-class families who do not have strong views on the constitution.

They believe the SNP has managed to secure votes from Labour voters, including those who would still vote No in a referendum, and want to persuade them to switch their vote to the Tories.

A Survation poll last week found that 14 per cent of people who voted No in 2014 intended to vote SNP in the Holyrood election.

Former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown this week launched a campaign group which will target the 40 per cent of voters in ‘middle Scotland’ who do not have strong views on the Union. But Mr Ross said breaking the yellow wall will mean more than winning over middle Scotland, and the ‘real focus’ is ‘working Scotland’.

He added: ‘There are voters who back the SNP just now who hold conservative ideals and would switch over, if we only demonstrate that our values are their values.’

Since Ruth Davidson became leader in 2011, the Tories have successfully set up new strongholds across the Borders, Dumfries and Galloway, and the North-East.

But the party has struggled to make major gains in many parts of the Central Belt.

The Tories have broken through the former Labour ‘red wall’ across northern England thanks to populist policies and ambitious local spending plans.

But the Scottish Tories insist they will not seek to replicate Boris Johnson’s approach, as a different strategy is needed in Scotland.

Adam Morris, a former director of communications for the Scottish Conservatives, said: ‘The Conservative vote has probably been maxed out as things stand, so they need to try to give people new reasons to vote for them.

‘It sounds like a big hurdle, but Douglas proved during the election that he could defy the odds when it comes to results, so I’d say he’s well placed to do so again.’;

Mr Morris added: ‘In the past few years the party got good feedback from the new-build estates which are springing up all over Central Scotland, but much of that was people who were keen on Ruth Davidson above all else. So these people will need a new incentive, and that incentive obviously has to go beyond the constitution.

‘But if working-to-middle class people can vote Tory in the NorthEast and South of Scotland, there’s no insurmountable reason why they can’t in the Central Belt too.’

But he warned: ‘On the doorsteps of people who might vote Conservative in Scotland, Boris and Brexit are still the main reasons why they won’t. No progress will be made unless these folk are on board.’

THE ‘yellow wall’ of Nationalist support in the Central Belt might well appear unassailable. But Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross is right to identify its weaknesses – and pledge to exploit them.

As he points out, many Labour voters backed the SNP as they were impressed by Nicola Sturgeon’s handling of the pandemic. Within hours of the election result, she had used their votes to claim a mandate for Indyref 2.

That kind of betrayal will not be forgotten – and it represents an opportunity for the Conservatives as they attempt to build on their success last week.

Preventing an SNP majority was critical – and that mission was accomplished, against all odds. But the party must go further if it is to stand any chance of being in government at Holyrood.

It is now aiming to win over voters in ‘working Scotland’ who are sick of Nationalist failures – but may not have taken the step of voting Conservative.

As Gordon Brown highlighted this week, two out of five Scots are caught between the two extremes of Unionism and nationalism – and they are tired of the binary nature of a circular debate.

The tug-of-war over independence has dominated for too long, to the detriment of a host of other issues, from classroom standards to spiralling drug deaths.

The voters the Tories are targeting are also aspirational, but punitive SNP taxes mean they can keep less of what they earn.

Waste is endemic in the public sector and private firms are prevented from growing by sky-high rates and reams of red tape.

The country is in dire need of change – and with the right strategy the Tories could bring it about.

South of the Border, the party has shown it can win the trust of voters from families that in previous generations wouldn’t have dreamed of backing it.

As the extraordinary result in the Hartlepool by-election last week demonstrated, the Tories, in government at Westminster for more than a decade, have shown they can thrive by standing up for the values of ordinary families.

It’s true that a different approach may be needed in Scotland – but the new Tory group at Holyrood is diverse, encompassing MSPs from a variety of backgrounds, which can only heighten their appeal to a large cross-section of the electorate.

If they are to have any hope of supplanting the SNP, they must give voice to the forgotten Scots who want more for their children than a future blighted by the same old constitutional games.