Scottish Conservative Conference: Ruth Davidson vows to cut out deadwood

THE new Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson signalled that she will remove deadwood MSPs from the party in a drive to bring fresh talent into Holyrood.

In her first speech to the conference as leader, Davidson also pledged that she would fight to use new Holyrood powers to lower tax in Scotland and called on other party leaders to work with her to save the United Kingdom.

Having taken over an ageing party with only 15 MSPs in the Scottish Parliament and one MP at Westminster, Davidson called on delegates to “stop apologising for being Conservatives” and reconnect with people who no longer vote for the party.

She announced that the party’s deputy leader Jackson Carlaw will oversee an overhaul of the party’s constituency organisation. Included in Carlaw’s remit will be a change in the way that the Conservatives select candidates to stand for Holyrood in the PR system, which sees 56 of the parliament’s 129 members elected on a list system.

Davidson said: “We must review our candidate selection and our ranking process for Holyrood. We must make sure that the talented people in our ranks can play their full part as we take our party forward.”

Last night, a Conservative insider said: “Ruth wants to make the lists more open to get new blood into the parliament, so we will look at the ranking system.”

Currently, Conservative members decide where candidates stand on the lists. The higher up a candidate is, the better chance they have of entering parliament.

The party has not yet decided what sort of mechanism needs to be introduced in order to inject fresh faces.

When he stood against Davidson for the party leadership, Carlaw recommended that a three-term limit should be imposed on MSPs – a move that would limit their tenure in parliament to 12 years.

Carlaw also suggested that the limit should be applied retrospectively, in which case it would affect many of the Conservatives’ longest-serving figures such as Annabel Goldie, Alex Johnstone and Jamie MacGrigor.

Davidson also said the Scottish Tories would be rebranded announcing that the Scottish Conservatives would design their own distinct logo.

She said yesterday’s event in Troon would be the last Scottish conference at which the Conservatives’ “tree” logo would be used to symbolise the party north of the Border.

A “dynamic new logo and image” will replace the tree, which cost £40,000 to design and was once described by former Tory minister Norman Tebbit as a “bunch of broccoli”.

Promising to lead from the front at a time when her leadership is under scrutiny, Davidson said the party must reach out to voters. She added: “We won’t get their support from hiding our light under a bushel – from saying nothing to offend – for apologising for being Conservatives.”