The Scottish Conservatives

Dr Alan Convery

Senior Lecturer in
Politics at the University
of Edinburgh. He is the
author of The Territorial
Conservative Party:
Devolution and Party
Change in Scotland and
Wales (2016).

Scottish Election 2026

Section 1: Parties and the campaign

  1. How SNP and Swinney stopped the rot (Eddie Barnes)
  2. The Scottish green wave breaks at last (Dr Jonathan Parker)
  3. What went wrong for Labour (Prof Kezia Dugdale)
  4. The Scottish Conservatives (Dr Alan Convery)
  5. Reform’s courting of Scotland’s post-industrial communities (Dr Maike Dinger and Prof Darren Lilleker)
  6. From chatbots to the ballotbox – how voters used AI to learn about the Scottish Parliament election (Dr Louise Luxton, Dr Timea Balogh, Elise Frelin & Prof Zoe Greene)
  7. Online advertising in the Scottish Parliament election (Kate Dimson and Prof Cristian Vaccari)
  8. Boring is not a virtue: Lessons from Scottish parties’ campaigns on TikTok (Prof Ana Ines Langer, Dr Lluis de Nadal)
  9. When parties travel, does negativity follow? Comparing campaigns on X (Dr Aybuke Atalay, Dr Ricardo Ribeiro Ferreira)
  10. Minding the distance: leaders in the election manifestos (Dr Michael Higgins, Prof Angela Smith)
  11. “It’s the Crisis, Stupid!” – Permacrisis and the 2026 Scottish Parliament election (Dr Paul Anderson, Dr Coree Brown Swan, Dr Judith Sijstermans
  12. ‘Whither Scottish national identity? The Reform UK challenge to an inclusive Scotland’ (Dr Murray Leith, Dr Duncan Sim)
  13. Environmental politics: flooded off the agenda? (Dr Kristen Nicolson)
  14. A disappearing crisis? Climate debate in the 2026 Scottish election campaign (Dr William Dinan)
  15. The Curious Case of the Co-operative Party and Lessons for Labour (Katharine McCrossan)

The 2026 Scottish Parliament results are the worst performance for the Scottish Conservatives since 1999. Even after the party’s 1997 nadir, they managed to win 18 seats in the new Parliament in 1999. Now they have 12 seats. Yet there have been no immediate calls for the leader to resign and there is more of a sense of relief than panic. The party faced the twin difficulties of the dwindling significance of its most popular policy (‘No’ to a second independence referendum) and, for the first time, a major challenge on its right from a Populist Radical Right alternative. The election also followed a turbulent period at the UK Conservative level, culminating in the 2024 defeat (although despite halving its vote share the Scottish party managed to hold on to 5 of its 6 MPs at that election). Having held its own in four constituency contests (only one down on 2021), the party appears to have concluded that, while far from ideal, 2026 could have been a lot worse.

The party’s overall vote share in constituencies is down from 21.9 per cent to 11.8 per cent. In the regional list, it was also down from 2021 at 11.8 per cent. This regional vote share takes the party almost to where it was in 2011 under Annabel Goldie’s leadership (12.4 per cent). The party has gone from second in the chamber to fifth. This diminished standing will entail a loss of questions and committee positions.

An uncharitable interpretation of the relative success of the Scottish Conservatives at the 2016 and 2021 elections might argue that they got lucky, rather than fundamental party change. The one policy the party could absolutely agree on (and was central its identity and brand) was that it was resolutely against independence. As the constitutional question remained live after the 2014 referendum, the Scottish Conservatives were able to capitalise on their association with this position to attract voters who were worried about the possibility of another referendum. They were also able to attract voters who supported leave in the 2016 Brexit/EU membership referendum. The constitutional question had the added advantage of crowding out the space for a serious challenge from a Populist Radical Right rival.

However, as the independence issue has faded in significance, so have the fortunes of the Scottish Conservative Party (particularly since the Supreme Court ruling that the Scottish Parliament absolutely could not hold a second referendum without the UK Government’s permission). The unfreezing of the “yes” and “no” camps has also created the opportunity for Reform UK to make serious inroads into previously Conservative voters in Scotland. It attracts voters from all parties, but most transfers to it come from previous Conservative voters.

Centre-right parties all over Europe face hard strategic choices when they have to deal with a populist rival to their right. Russell Findlay is the first Scottish Conservative leader to face this challenge. The party’s defections in the 2021-2026 Parliament illustrate the dilemma perfectly: one MSP went to Reform, the other went to the Liberal Democrats. There is some evidence from other European countries that moving towards the policy positions of the rival party merely serves to highlight and endorse their platform, rather than retain votes. Findlay now faces some of the same sort of trade-offs that confront Kemi Badenoch at the UK level.

The perennial question of whether the Scottish Conservatives should split from the UK Party and form a separate party of the centre-right in Scotland has not come up in the immediate aftermath of the election but might be a topic of discussion at some point in this parliamentary term. The Murdo Fraser option from 2011 was to create a new party that stood at both levels. The other option would be to split into two separate parties: the Scottish Conservatives would remain with the UK party and stand for UK elections; another new party of the centre-right could fight elections in Scotland as a completely separate entity.

However, before questions of structure can be answered, the Scottish Conservatives probably need to decide what they want to achieve and their policy agenda. In that respect, this election has taken them back to where they found themselves in 1999 and 2011. The Scottish Conservatives will always oppose independence and maybe always propose tax cuts, but what else are they for? It is true that the Conservatives would have done a lot better (and the SNP worse) if Reform UK voters had not abandoned them, but that message did not work in 2026. Reform UK voters were not happy about the way Scotland was being governed. That is not going to change because of this election.