Tory MSPs should ‘take lesson from UK party’ and resist public attacks in leadership race, Andrew Bowie says

Scottish Conservative MSPs should “take a lesson” from the UK party and resist attacking each other in public during the leadership race, Andrew Bowie has claimed.

The shadow minister for veteran affairs made the comments amid a transparency row that saw four of the six candidates say the race must not proceed any further until “serious questions” were answered following claims Douglas Ross plotted to stand down more than a year ago in order to swap Holyrood for Westminster.

Mr Ross, who is an MSP, is said to have met with Kathleen Robertson, who was the Tory general election candidate for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey, in July 2023 to ask if he could replace her. He said he would stand down as party leader if selected. It follows a rapidly escalating Scottish Tory civil war, that had already seen Tory leadership candidate Murdo Fraser told to avoid “blue-on-blue attacks” by the shadow Scotland secretary John Lamont, who accused him of criticising both Mr Ross and his team which includes fellow leadership candidate Meghan Gallacher MSP.

Speaking to Scotland on Sunday, the West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine MP also labelled suggestions the Scottish Tories should break away from the UK party as “nonsense”.

Mr Bowie, who is backing Russell Findlay for leader, lamented the race so far, suggesting it had been dominated by party in-fighting. He said: “I don't have a bad word to say about any of the candidates individually, but I think there's a marked contrast between the civil nature of the UK contest thus far, versus the Scottish contest.

“I think there’s been far too many instances north of the Border already of  blue on blue attacks and personal attacks, and also leading members of our party in Scotland instead of where there's been an issue or or a decision made regarding leadership election or anything else, a policy decision, who think is incumbent on them to run straight to Twitter, instead of actually taking it up behind the scenes and getting a resolution to their concern. 

“I do think that the Scottish party could learn a lesson from the UK party in that public fighting and bickering, it may make you feel good getting that front page headline, that exclusive, that quote, but actually it does nothing to engender support out in the rest of the country. 

“I think it damages the brand, it damages the party overall and ultimately, it makes those people who go out and campaign for you question why they're doing it if you if they don't have faith in the organisation for which you are spending so much time, expending so much energy and spending so much money.

“So I think that some people within our party in Scotland have to really examine whether or not it's in our, as in the party's best interest, and indeed, Scotland's best interest, because we need an effective opposition, whatever the makeup of the government is following the next election to be so publicly critical of the party to which you are representing in the Scottish or indeed the UK Parliament.” Turning to the suggestion that splitting the party from its Westminster counterparts could help it electorally, Mr Bowie claimed such a move would “do the SNPs job for it”.

He explained: “You can hear the headlines now ‘even the Scottish Conservatives don’t believe in the union or staying together or don't think they can be better together. I think there are many practical reasons why a split wouldn't work. The fact that we are one party, everything from membership databases to finances to party officers and all the rest of it.

“Also the practical side within the UK Parliament. If we were to be a separate party, would that mean that I and my colleagues would take a separate whip to the rest of the Conservative party? Would that therefore preclude us from serving in a shadow or indeed a cabinet position?

“Would we ever really see the day where we would vote against in a confidence vote? There are so many questions as to what the practical nature of that would be within Parliament and outwith parliament.

“Our members are proud to be Conservatives, we're very fortunate in that we have complete autonomy as a Scottish conservative party to set policy, to make appointments, to run our election campaigns, but we do that within the overall umbrella of the wider UK conservative party and I think that actually lend itself to a  good description of how we can make Devolution work quite well. “If we can’t demonstrate that works within one political party, the unionist party, then I think that our arguments for Scotland's maintaining its place in the United Kingdom falls flat on its head.

“Ultimately it doesn’t matter what we do, what we call ourselves, we'll still be the Tories, we’ll still be the ‘effing Tories’ to many people north of the Border, whatever we call ourselves. This is a nonsense idea.”

In a rallying cry to his fellow Tories, Mr Bowie called for them to focus on the Holyrood election.

He said: “We’ve got a Holyrood election in less than two years, that's no time. We've got an SNP who are very bruised from the election that they just suffered in Scotland. You've got a Labour party who are riding high.

“Just today you've seen some incredible headlines regarding the state of the public finances in Scotland, an emergency spending only order from Shona Robison. There are huge issues at stake and a huge opportunity in 2026 if we get it right to increase our number if we play it right or be that party that holds either a Labour party or diminished SNP party to account, but we won’t get there if we spend it on infighting and focusing on other things. People don’t care about what we call ourselves, and whether or not we’re one party or not.”

Despite the fresh row, there were also warm words for the soon-to-be former Scottish Tory leader Mr Ross, who failed in his bid to win a Westminster seat at the general election, having replaced David Duguid as the candidate.

Mr Bowie said: “His legacy will be that he managed to achieve our best ever result in Holyrood in terms of number of votes cast for the Scottish Conservative party and that he prevented the SNP from getting a majority in the Scottish Parliament.

“That's quite a legacy actually and I think he can be very proud of that. Even this year, when you look at some of the local authority byelections, we were winning up and down the country. 

“We've had a pretty good run electorally this election. Okay, we didn't do very well in terms of vote share, but that's because we focused very much on a target seat campaign.

“We went in with six and came out with five, now if you’d proportionally said to the UK party that could be the result, they would have bitten your arm off. “He can look back on his legacy with a sense of pride. I didn't agree with every decision he took, every statement he made, and I did question the manner in which the situation in Banff and Buchan was dealt with over the general election. “But at the end of the day I think Douglas overall can look back at a very successful time as leader of the Scottish Conservative party.”