[SCOT goes POP!] Thoughts on Russell Findlay's win in the Scottish Tory leadership election

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Thoughts on Russell Findlay's win in the Scottish Tory leadership election

The irony has often been noted that Labour and not the Tories are self-conscious about being a party of diversity, and yet it's the Tories not Labour that have produced three female Prime Ministers and one ethnic minority Prime Minister.  The argument is that the Tories will always choose merit when they see it, whereas Labour will allow unconscious prejudice to get in the way.  However, judging from Meghan Gallacher's poor result this morning, it looks like the Scottish Tories choosing a leader with a working class accent will remain the Final Frontier for many years to come.

Scottish Conservative leadership election result:

Russell Findlay 2565 

Murdo Fraser 1187 

Meghan Gallacher 403

Possibly the SNP and Labour have both dodged a bullet with Gallacher's failure.  It's hard to know for sure, because the Tories might have found that the downsides of having her as leader would have outweighed the upsides, but the one thing that might just have caused working class voters in west-central Scotland to take another look at the Tories would have been a Tory leader who speaks just like them.

Someone on the previous thread suggested it was a shame independence supporters didn't infiltrate the Tories and swing the contest for Murdo Fraser.  But that might be a case of 'careful what you wish for', because an independent centre-right party free of Tory branding, portraying itself as patriotically-Scottish-but-oh-isn't-independence-such-a-bore might actually have done quite well. Look at what happened with the CAQ in Quebec.

No, we may be just as well having Russell Findlay, who will change nothing and doesn't strike me as Mr Charisma.  He's a more credible figure than Douglas Ross, but then so are most hamsters.  And assuming the Tories are mostly in the market for committed unionist voters, a slightly more competent leader may even do us a favour by drawing support away from Labour.

It was Ruth Davidson who originally pushed Douglas Ross as some sort of Messiah, wasn't it?  That says a lot about her own much-vaunted political judgement.

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Source: Thoughts on Russell Findlay's win in the Scottish Tory leadership election