It’s time the Scottish Tories stop fighting indyref

If you are one of the people who has been selected to get a message in the post from the Conservatives as part of their million-pound letter-writing campaign, I’ve got some bad news. They have wasted their money and your time.

I spent three years of my life campaigning for Better Together.

I’ve not softened my stance since. Nor have any of my Scottish Liberal Democrat MP or MSP colleagues. So it is nonsense for the Scottish Conservatives to claim otherwise, as Ruth Davidson did on these pages on Saturday.

Of course, there are liberal-minded people who supported independence and Ruth Davidson will know there are conservative-minded people who did exactly the same. I want all liberals to support the Liberal Democrats to get a liberal Scotland, whether they were No or Yes. But our position on the United Kingdom has not changed.

What disappoints me most is that Ruth Davidson seems incapable of moving on from the divisions and arguments of the referendum. It was a big decision and we made our choice. Now it is time to move on and tackle the big problems the SNP Government ignored in the last five years.

Take education. We used to have the best education in the world, but under the SNP it is slipping down the world rankings. We need to make a transformational investment of one penny on income tax to put £475 million into nursery education, schools and colleges. We need a big debate on education but Ruth Davidson prefers to hark back to the referendum.

Take health. Mental health services are very poor in this country. People wait for far too long to get urgent treatment. Under the SNP the proportion of NHS funding spent on mental health fell. I have a plan to improve services but instead of discussing that, Ruth wants to rerun the referendum.

Take the police. The centralisation of the police has been one of the SNP’s biggest mistakes. We opposed it from the beginning, unlike the Conservatives who sat on their hands. I want to make changes to get the police service back to its best but Ruth Davidson would prefer to attack me about the referendum.

Scotland needs to move on. Ruth Davidson should move on too.

Scotland needs to move on. Ruth Davidson should move on too