Scottish Conservatives

The Scottish Conservatives have been the principal right-of-centre unionist party at Holyrood since 2016, when Ruth Davidson led the party to 31 seats and established it as the main opposition to the SNP. Since Davidson's departure in 2019, successive leaders — Jackson Carlaw, Douglas Ross, and now Russell Findlay (elected November 2023) — have struggled to maintain that position. The Institute for Fiscal Studies, reviewing the party's 2026 Holyrood manifesto, found that its NHS double-lock pledge underestimated the commitment by at least £600 million.

On 7 May 2026 the Scottish Conservatives won 12 Holyrood seats, all from regional lists, losing all five constituency seats they had held — including Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire, and Galloway and West Dumfries. With Reform UK winning 17 seats and tying with Labour, the Conservatives fell to third on the right and fourth overall in the chamber. The result marks the party's worst Holyrood performance since devolution began in 1999. A third of 2024 Scottish Conservative voters had migrated to Reform UK, whose campaign spending significantly exceeded the Scottish Conservatives'.

The 12-seat outcome is now the reference point for Russell Findlay's leadership. Scottish Conservatives' PATH back to opposition relevance runs through distinguishing themselves from both the SNP on constitutional grounds and Reform UK on style and fiscal responsibility — a narrow lane in a chamber where Reform's entry has redrawn the right-of-centre map. Whether the party can rebuild constituency-level presence in the 2031 Holyrood election will determine whether 2026 is a floor or an ongoing decline.