JACKSON Carlaw has confirmed his bid to be the Scottish Tories' next leader, saying he is "ready for the fight".
Mr Carlaw, who stood in as interim leader after Ruth Davidson's sudden resignation from the role in August 2019, announced his candidacy shortly after nominations opened on Monday morning.
Frontbencher Michelle Ballantyne, the party's social security spokeswoman at Holyrood, is also widely expected to stand.
Mr Carlaw already has the backing of Holyrood frontbenchers Liam Kerr and Rachael Hamilton, who are jointly chairing his leadership campaign.
He tweeted: "As nominations open for leader of the Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party this morning, I can confirm I'll be standing.
"We must take the fight to Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP, broadening our platform and diversifying our party. I'm ready for the fight."
The leadership contest comes after Ms Davidson, who transformed the Scottish Conservatives to make the party the main opposition to the SNP in Scotland, stepped down - citing both her "conflict" over Brexit and the birth of her son Finn as reasons for her decision.
The hunt for her successor was put on hold after Prime Minister Boris Johnson called a snap general election.
The Tories lost seven of the 13 seats they had held in Scotland, with the campaign focused heavily on opposition to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon's plans to hold a second independence referendum.
Writing in the Sunday Times newspaper, Mr Carlaw said the next year's Holyrood elections must be "about far more than our constitutional settlement".
He called on Tories to raise their game, saying: "We need to be bold and fearlessly champion solutions to the challenges of the 2020s that Scotland will face - to create opportunity in housing and education, secure a sustainable future for our publicly-funded NHS, deliver - not just promise - on the environment and transform our post-Brexit economy.
"And to succeed, Scottish Conservatives at Holyrood need to look more like the Scotland we seek to represent, and to embrace procedures that deliver this.
"In short, we need to ensure that while we have many more new MSPs joining our team in 2021, all are typical of the new generation of Conservatives representing their communities at all levels, diverse in every sense, talented, experienced, of all ages and backgrounds."
Nominations close at noon on Friday January 17, with those looking to be the next leader needing to secure the support of at least 100 party members.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel