As I left the Edinburgh general election count at the Royal Highland Showground last Friday morning I was asked if I was going to have some time off, recharge the batteries and reflect on what was an exhausting and at times dispiriting campaign.
But the answer was no because I’d already been making appointments. The need for active MSPs doesn’t stop because there’s been a general election and it’s the parliament recess. I knew from polling I was highly unlikely to be the next Edinburgh South West MP so there was never any point going off to lick personal wounds.
Instead, I’ve been speaking to police about the ongoing problems with anti-social E-bikes and motorbikes, with masked riders scoping the areas for cars
I’ve also raised growing concern in the Asian community about the everyday racism and intimidation they experience. Community representatives told me it’s now so prevalent and that incidents go unreported as they don’t believe the police will act, which must be addressed.
The answer is more police and better education, and if last week’s election was bad for the Scottish Conservatives, it was proportionately far worse for the SNP because of their dreadful record over the past 17 years in which basic services have been their responsibility.
Last week’s election was the starting gun for the 2026 Scottish election campaign, and it’s glaringly obvious we have an awful lot of work to do to make sure the Scottish Conservatives at the very least retain our position as the main opposition, but not to Nationalism but the Labour-led left-wing consensus.
The SNP put independence on “page one, line one” of its manifesto and across Scotland voters told them what they thought about this cloth-eared approach to their immediate priorities, and the threat of separation has now receded.
But the challenge for us is to produce a compelling centre-right alternative, to hit back against the presumption that milking taxpayers is the answer to every problem, and show that just throwing money at unreformed services improves nothing. And we must ask ourselves why so many presumably Conservative voters switched to Reform.
We do have an opportunity in the forthcoming Scottish Conservative leadership contest to debate what that future looks like, but if it ends up being about party organisation we will have missed the point entirely. We can’t go on as we were, but the starting point is how we improve the essential services on which voters rely, not navel gazing about internal structures or breakaway parties which voters don’t give a fig about.
For now, I must ensure First Minster John Swinney honours his promise to visit Baberton Mains people still affected by the fatal gas explosion.
And I have the site of Winchburgh station to visit, where the developers overseeing the construction of thousands of new homes have been building access roads and bridges in the expectation that the SNP Scottish Government will do its bit and build the station itself after years of denying responsibility.
No matter the party, people do not elect us to make excuses or pass the buck but to get things done, and that’s how I intend to spend the next two years. And at least now we get to see if all those new Labour MPs are up to the job.
