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Louise Thomas
Editor
Russell Findlay has been elected as the new leader of the Scottish Conservatives after winning a majority of votes in the first round.
Mr Findlay secured a clear victory with 62 per cent of the vote, with Murdo Fraser coming second and Meghan Gallacher third.
He called for the party to “come together as one united team”, as the Scottish Conservatives look to bounce back from their worst UK general election result since 2005.
The Scottish Conservatives saw their vote share halved since the 2019 general election, when Jackson Carlaw ran the party.
Mr Findlay said: “Let us start the hard work right now to win back public trust.
“I want to deliver the message to people across Scotland who do not feel that anyone represents them, who are scunnered by the divisiveness and fringe obsessions of the Scottish Parliament, who feel let down and failed by politicians of every single party, including ours, who think politicians are all the same.
“I feel that way – I get it, but I’m not the same.”
Mr Findlay had been the clear favourite to take the Scottish leadership after being endorsed by Ruth Davidson, the party’s most successful leader in recent times.
With a turnout of 60 per cent, the party’s returning officer Leonard Wallace announced on Friday that Mr Findlay had won with 2,565 of the 4,155 votes cast.
Mr Fraser won 1,187 votes while Ms Gallagher came third with 403.
It was a bitter contest, with accusations of dirty tricks and the re-emergence of a feud between Mr Fraser and former leader Ruth Davidson – who accused the former of seeking to effectively break away from the UK party in a “trojan horse” plan, which he denied.
Predecessor Douglas Ross announced he would stand down after the general election following a rebellion among MSPs and Conservative activists.
Mr Ross had stepped in to replace David Duguid – a popular general election candidate for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East – while he recovered from a medical operation.
Mr Ross was the only Scottish Tory to lose his seat, as the SNP’s Seamus Logan beat him by a 942 margin after a Reform Party surge damaged the Tory vote.
Despite being the second-largest party in the Scottish parliament with 31 seats, the Scottish Conservatives may drop into third at the 2026 election if opinion polls don’t improve.
According to an average calculated by Electoral Calculus, the Scottish Tories currently sit around 12 per cent in the polls, with Reform not far behind.
Mr Findlay was formerly a journalist for The Sun, STV and the Sunday Mail before entering politics in 2021 with a failed attempt to be elected as the MSP for Paisley.
In December 2015, Mr Findlay was on the receiving end of an acid attack on his doorstep while reporting for The Sun on gang crime in Glasgow.
Mr Findlay held down his attacker, William Burns, long enough for the police to arrive. Burns was sentenced to a 10-year jail term.
