“Hello conference, how fantastic it is to be here with you again.
Almost exactly one year ago I was elected to be leader of the
Scottish Conservative and Unionist party, and just a few weeks
after that, the outstanding was elected as our UK
leader.
Now we both knew that we had a tough fight on our hands.
We knew then, just as know now that we are fighting for the
future of our great country and let me tell you this, we are up
for this great scrap.
Because left in the hands of Labour and the SNP, the United
Kingdom's future would be bleak.
Weaker and divided, smaller and poorer.
Under the left-wing policies of and , the only growth would be the
dept left to future generations.
I want our young people to have hope for the future.
Our party and our country, believe in the party of aspiration.
We stand for something that no other party truly does and that is
advancing opportunities for those willing to work hard.
Reaping the rewards of hard graft.
We stand for the strives.
We stand for those who create jobs and wealth.
And conference, this is why we are in this fight.
That is why the Conservative and Unionist party must and will
emerge even stronger.
And where we seek a stronger and fairer economy, Labour thinks
very differently.
They want everyone to pay more tax except for, perhaps .
Labour has broken so many promises all that's left of their
manifesto are photographs of Sir , in clothes that someone else
has paid for, standing next to people who he has sacked or people
who he really should sack.
And then there's the SNP.
Now Scotland can claim to some of the great thinkers of
yester-year.
The country of Adam , the father of conservatism,
Of David Hume the great moral philosopher,
And the many Scots who helped to forge the Great British Empire.
But under the SNP, yes, he's a fan of the empire,
But under the SNP, Scotland has become a laboratory for weird ad
whacky policies.
For the SNP, there is no policy that can be to harmful,
half-baked or unhinged.
From rent controls to a basic universal income, to a four-day
working week.
If it's woke, they want it.
They embrace every mad-cap idea known to man and woman.
Yes conference, man and woman because we Conservatives know there
are two genders.
Just two, not two dozen as the SNP would have us believe.
And the architect of the SNP's gender self-idea law was .
Do you remember her?
And an arch-opponent was .
Our party killed it, stone dead.
And now quitting the Edinburgh
parliament, which you might want to call a political deal-break.
But friends, please don't get carried away because I have to
offer the new SNP leader, , offers more of the same
division and decay.
He was not Nicola Sturgeon's obedient deputy.
He's been obsessed with breaking up the United Kingdom from the
age of 15.
He probably recons that Brave Heart was a documentary.
And of conference if you will please indulge me, I'm going to
reference the famous Brave Heart Battle cry of ‘Freedom'.
Because that word actually sums up what next year's vital
Scottish election is really all about.
The people of Scotland don't want independence, but they do want
greater freedom.
That's the freedom to keep more of their hard-earned money.
Not pay more tax than the rest of Britain for doing the same job.
Small businesses want freedom from the SNP's relentless barrage
of rules and regulations.
Ordinary people want freedom to speak openly, not constrained by
Hamza Yusuf's chilling hate-crime law.
And it really is a great irony that the so-called party of
independence has trashed so many of our freedoms.
As the party of the union, we want to give back freedom and
control to the people pf Scotland.
Control over their own lives, their own decisions, their own
money, and that's what we privy stand for as Scottish
Conservatives and Unionists.
