Ruth: It’s time to vote tactically to halt SNP
Tories urge Scots to back pro-UK parties in elections
SCOTS have been urged to vote tactically this week to stop the SNP from using the result to push the case for independence.
With three days until voting gets under way in the local elections, former Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson issued an unprecedented plea for Tory voters to back other pro-UK parties to stifle the nationalists.
She said tactical voting can help send Nicola Sturgeon a message that people want the focus to be on ‘local action, not the nationalists’ obsession’.
Baroness Davidson said that people can ‘maximise the proand
Union vote’ by giving Tory candidates their top preference votes and then backing other pro-UK candidates from rival parties in order of preference.
It is the first time the Scottish Tories have ever urged their own voters to also give lower preference votes to other Unionist candidates in a local election.
Writing in today’s Mail, Miss Davidson says Miss Sturgeon will use success on Thursday to ‘stir up division and grievance’ and push for another referendum.
Miss Davidson is being deployed by the Scottish Conservatives alongside leader Douglas Ross in the final days of the campaign to appeal to proUK voters.
Explaining the decision to back tactical voting in local elections for the first time, a Scottish Tory source said: ‘It is more of a concerted attempt to lock the SNP out of councils.
‘If this had happened in 2017 there may have been more areas where the SNP could have been locked out of power.’
Ahead of joining Mr Ross on the campaign trail in Edinburgh today, Miss Davidson said: ‘The failing record of Nicola Sturgeon and her candidates is on the ballot paper this Thursday. They’ve left Glasgow filthier than ever before. They’ve left drug deaths to spiral in Dundee.
‘They’ve got plans to make it unbelievably expensive to drive to work in our capital city.
‘Don’t reward the SNP for failure. Get out to the polls and teach them a lesson.’
Miss Davidson added: ‘Scotland is worse off now than when the SNP came to power. They’re dragging our country down every year that they run our councils and our government.
‘Yet the SNP are more arrogant complacent than ever before.
‘The ferries scandal shows that Nicola Sturgeon thinks she can get away with treating the Scottish public as fools. On Thursday, hold the SNP to account for taking their eye off the ball. Vote Scottish Conservative for local action on local issues.’
A Panelbase opinion poll for the Sunday Times on Westminster voting intentions yesterday put the SNP on 42 per cent, Labour 24 per cent and the Tories on 21 per cent.
Responding to Miss Davidson, Miss Sturgeon said: ‘I think it says everything that you have got a member of the unelected House of Lords now replacing their elected leader.’
An SNP spokesman said: ‘If the Tories put half as much effort into lobbying Boris Johnson to act on the cost of living crisis as they did firing insults at the SNP, they might not be slipping into third place in the polls.’
‘Arrogant and complacent’