'I might vote Tory this time': On the campaign trail with Thomas Kerr

And besides, his natural habitat is the terrain that lies between no-chance and hopeless.

In 2017, he went where no Tory had ever gone before when he was elected to represent Shettleston in the east end of Glasgow at the local council elections. In doing so, he swept aside two much more highly favoured and experienced SNP candidates.

Shettleston is that district of Glasgow which only seems to pique the media’s interest every three years when Scotland’s latest multi-deprivation index is revealed.

Before 2017, the prospect of a Tory getting in there seemed about as credible as Nicola Sturgeon’s little-known predilection for taking holidays in a camper-van.

“When you stand as a Conservative candidate in the east end of Glasgow, you never expect to win,” Mr Kerr, then 20, had said on the morning after he took Shettleston.

But first though, we must get AC/DC out of the way. Mr Kerr was born and raised in the equally edgy Cranhill area, which sits alongside Shettleston. “Did you know that Angus Young and his brother Malcolm, the founder members of AC/DC, were born and raised in Cranhill,” I tell him.

“I didn’t know that at all,” he says.

“Well, you know now,” say I. “And I think that the city council should mark this with a suitable monument or festival.”

“I think that’s a great idea,” he says.

“Well, I think you’re the man for the job,” I urge him. “Those snobs in Labour and the SNP have previously turned their noses up at it.”

Mr Kerr might just be humouring me, as everyone else does, but if anyone could get this done it’s him.

Frank McAveety, Labour’s Grey Eminence in Glasgow, is known to be an admirer of the way in which Mr Kerr cuts about the place and conducts himself. And when I tell the former Scottish Conservative MSP, Professor Adam Tomkins, that I’ll be spending some time with Mr Kerr he says: “Thomas is an up-and-coming working class Tory in the Annie Wells mould. He’s effective, hard-working and committed. He’s got great potential.”

The voters of Shettleston seem to think so too. Against even greater odds than in 2017 he held his seat in 2021.

You could paper your front room with the articles I’ve written inveighing against all manner of Tory iniquity, but this chap can handle himself no bother at all.

“So, why the Tories?” I ask him.

“I’ve always been keen on politics,” he says, “and I first flirted with the Labour Party.” He speaks fondly of Margaret Curran, the former Labour MSP and MP and shadow cabinet Scottish Cabinet Minister.

“I became increasingly angry though, at how people in places like Cranhill and Shettleston have been let down by both Labour and the SNP. Labour took them for granted and now the SNP are doing the same.

“There are other working-class people who saw the party change when Ruth Davidson became leader. She reached out to people like me and showed us that there was a place in the party for us too.

“This is what the Scottish Tories are. We’re a very diverse group and you won’t see any tweed jackets and posh accents here.

“We genuinely feel we have more to offer people in these neighbourhoods than the SNP or Labour. They exist merely as election fodder for Labour and the SNP.”

Our meeting occurs in the wake of another data-dump indicating gross inequality across Scotland. The addiction death numbers, despite the Government’s callous attempts to massage them, remain the highest in Europe. Alcohol deaths are on the increase and the attainment gap in Scotland’s schools is as wide as ever.

The dial on social improvement in working class communities has barely moved after nearly a quarter of a century of left-wing devolved government in Scotland. Unlike the overwhelming majority in Scotland’s professional, political elites, Thomas Kerr has lived experience of what it means to grow up stalked by deprivation and inequality.

“Both of my parents were addicts,” he says. “And my father died of drug addiction. But they were no better or worse than thousands of others in my community struggling against overwhelming odds.”

This, he says, is why the Scottish Tories are sponsoring the Right to Recovery Bill, which prioritises the funding of rehab beds to tackle Scotland’s drugs crisis.

He also agrees with FAVOR, the addiction recovery group who have been instrumental in drafting the bill, that too many among Scotland’s political elites don’t seriously believe that addicts can fully recover and that managing addiction provides a simplistic alternative.

Yet, neither the SNP nor Labour have thus far backed the bill, preferring instead to oversee the creation of a multi-million-pound recovery industry for middle-class academics and government-funded hand-wringers to top up their pensions.

“The main reason I joined the Tories was that Labour and the SNP both seemed to want to keep the working-class in their boxes and only to emerge for votes,” says Thomas.

“They keep the poor poor. And then they make the Tories a convenient baddie to mask their own failings.

“The Conservative Party was the only one that really spoke to me and said ‘we’ll give you a hand up if you work hard and play by the rules’. I just felt the SNP and Labour had no real interest in the actual people in the sort of communities I grew up in.”

He recalls an interview with my Herald colleague Mark Smith after he was first elected in Shettleston. “We were sitting at a bus-stop in Shettleston Road and Mark introduced me as the Tory councillor. And they said both said: ‘aye, we already know Thomas. We voted for him in the council because he’s a local lad and he’ll get things done’. They’d never seen anyone from the other two parties.”

Then he reminds me that the two so-called left-wing parties in Scotland are led by individuals who are very affluent and privately educated. “Our leader, Douglas Ross is the only one of the three main political leaders who was educated at a state school.”

Yet, surely, I ask him, he must be aware that many of the social challenges encountered by people in working-class neighbourhoods stem from multi-generational Tory policies that punished working people, took away their employment rights and then targeted benefits that they’d already paid for? And that this all occurred long before the devolved era. Thus far, I’ve really taken to this young man: his honesty; his obvious sincerity and love for his local community. And so, I’m quietly willing for him not to spout the usual trite Tory propaganda about rewarding people in work and being opposed to the something-for-nothing culture. “Look, if I was growing up under Margaret Thatcher I wouldn’t have joined the Tories,” he says.

“But I’m convinced we’re building something in the modern Scottish Tories that can help working-class people affected by social challenges to re-build their lives. And I’ve never been slow to criticise my own party over some of their benefits policies.”

Later, as I head back to the city centre, I’m stopped by a local woman who had seen Mr Kerr and me and his small clutch of volunteers as they handed out leaflets. “Are you with those Tories,” she asks me. There’s no point in denying it, me with my royal blue suit and blue shirt.

“I like that young bloke,” she says. “He looks like he means it. I voted SNP the last time, but they’ve had their chance.”

“Have you ever voted Tory before?” I ask. “No, but this time I just might.”

Thomas Kerr still won’t win this by-election. Probably. I can’t be the only one though who thinks we’re watching a future Scottish leader of his party. And I can’t be the only left-leaning voter who would vote for this candidate before Humza Yousaf’s career SNP.