Russell Findlay

Russell Findlay leads the Scottish Conservatives into the 7 May 2026 Holyrood election having taken over the leadership in January 2023, succeeding Douglas Ross. A former Daily Record investigative journalist, he became MSP for West Scotland on the regional list in 2021. He launched Get Scotland Working as the party manifesto, centred on a £500 pensioner council tax cut and supply-side economic measures. The Institute for Fiscal Studies assessed the pensioner cut and described it as unlikely to survive contact with reality.

The campaign context is bleak for the party constituency prospects. An Electoral Calculus MRP conducted across 4,105 respondents in March 2026 projects the Scottish Conservatives at nine seats, all from regional lists, and zero constituency seats -- a result unprecedented since devolution began in 1999. The party currently holds five constituency seats, all projected to fall to the SNP: Aberdeenshire West, Dumfriesshire, Eastwood, Ettrick Roxburgh and Berwickshire, and Galloway and West Dumfries.

Findlay position in Scottish politics is paradoxical: his party is projected to fall below Scottish Labour in the seat count (Labour at 17 seats to the Tories nine), which would strip the Conservatives of official opposition status for the first time under devolution. His value proposition -- that the Conservatives are the only credible unionist opposition to the SNP -- is undermined if Labour overtakes them. He entered the campaign as a recognisable media figure but leads into it with the weakest structural position the Scottish Conservatives have faced since Holyrood opened.