The Scottish Tories is facing a major threat at the Holyrood election from Nigel Farage's Reform UK which is preparing to stand candidates in all constituencies north of the border and ramping up it campaigning presence north of the border.
Douglas Ross's party is formally embarking on a leadership contest next week after Mr Ross announced his resignation during the general election campaign.
Nominations open on Thursday and close on August 22 with the new leader to be unveiled on September 27.
How candidates propose dealing with the challenge posed by Reform is likely to be a key theme in the contest.
Deputy leader Meghan Gallacher, pictured below, with Douglas Ross and Stephen Kerr, who announced her candidacy on Friday, said last month the Scottish Tories did not anticipate the threat Mr Farage's party to them at the general election.
The Scottish Conservatives suffered a devastating result on July 4 with vote its in Scotland almost halved, down 12.4 percentage points to 12.7%. In terms of vote share it was the worst result for the Scottish Conservatives since 1997.
Mr Ross failed to get elected in Aberdeenshire North and Moray East with the Conservatives coming second to the SNP in the seat while Reform came third.
However, they managed to hold onto five seats, one less than in 2019.
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The SNP managed to win Aberdeenshire North and Moray East as well as Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey after the Reform candidates took away support for the Tories in those seats.
Senior sources in Reform have told the Herald on Sunday the party was taken back at how well it did in Scotland and believe it is gathering momentum as the Holyrood election looms.
"We were surprised how many votes we got in Scotland without really campaigning," said one insider.
"Reform is going to gather a lot of strength and momentum."
Reform UK won five seats at the general election, and while none of its candidates were elected in Scotland the party managed to get a sizeable support in some areas.
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Overall it got 7% of all votes - outperforming the Scottish Greens which took 4%- and less than the Lib Dems who got 10%. Reform's best performance was Aberdeenshire North and Moray East taking almost 15% of votes.
It netted 9.8% of all votes in Glenrothes and Mid Fife, 9.4% in Dumfries and Galloway and 9.2% in Alloa and Grangemouth. Some 6.7% of voters backed Reform UK in Glasgow East and Glasgow North East.
Helen McDade, spokeswoman for Reform UK Scotland, who was a candidate at this year's general election in Perth and Kinross-shire, said the party was pleased with its result which helped to prepare the groundwork for the Holyrood elections in 2026 where it hoped to get at least one MSP elected in each of the eight regions.
"Like everyone else we had expected the election to be later in the year so we were gearing up from a standing start for the campaign...and we will expect to do better in Scottish elections," she said.
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"The general election gave us information about where we have support and where we can expect to do well. We fully expect to have MSPs in 2026...at least one in each region and we would hope to get more. There were areas we did better in and may do better in with some work....We still expect to stand people in constituencies. We are gathering membership all the time. I don't know what it is in Scotland at the moment but across the UK it is 70,000."
She added: "We are really expecting to do well. This is not a flash in the pan. People were telling us 'I'm glad I have a Reform candidate to vote for'".
"Our aim is to put candidates everywhere in Scotland. Obviously it's early days, we need to see about that, we are not going to stand candidates who are not good candidates."
Ms McDade said that work was underway to select by election candidates in council seats were councillors were elected to Westminster and would be standing down.
She added Reform UK took significant votes from the Conservatives though in terms of membership she said people were joining from other parties, including the SNP and Labour, while some new members had not been in a political party.
Reform UK conducted a low key campaign in Scotland with former party leader Richard Tice saying before the election the country was "a dangerous place" for Mr Farage.
His comments came more than a decade after Mr Farage left an Edinburgh pub under police escort as protesters thronged outside.
Reform UK’s previous incarnation, the Brexit Party, came second in Scotland in the EU elections of 2019, winning 14.8% of the vote. In that contest the Tory vote collapsed to a share of 11.6% with Labour – which lost two MEPs – down to 9.3%.
Reform’s result was dwarfed by that of the SNP, which took 37.7% in that election, but the fact remains that it was a result which showed that the party could be seen by voters in Scotland as an attractive alternative to larger, longer-established parties.
"There’s a huge message here, massive message here,” Mr Farage said at the time. “The Labour and Conservative parties could learn a big message from tonight, though I don’t suppose that they actually will.”
Ahead of polling day leading pollster Professor Sir John Curtice, of Strathclyde University, said Reform UK was proving to be an “utter disaster” for the Conservatives.
Speaking at an online event organised by the Fraser of Allander economic think tank at Strathclyde in June, he said: “This is a real, real problem for the Conservatives because virtually all the people who are switching to Reform are 2019 Conservative voters.
“We also know from what happened in the local elections down south at the beginning of last month that if Reform were not on the ballot paper they wouldn’t be voting Labour instead.
“Any chance the Conservatives ever had when they fired the starting gun on May 22 that they might be able to narrow Labour’s lead was predicated on them being able to win back those Reform voters.”
Last month Mr Tice, who is deputy leader of Reform UK and MP for Boston and Skegness, said in the wake of the general election his party could overtake the Scottish Tories at the next Holyrood election because of the voting system.
Scottish Conservative party chairman Craig Hoy MSP said: “While the Scottish Conservatives managed to hold on to all but one of our seats at the general election, we need to consider why many voters opted for other parties or stayed at home, and do everything we can to win them back.
“We warned leading up to polling day that a vote for Reform would only help the SNP – and that’s how it transpired. Reform votes helped the SNP sneak in through the back door in both Aberdeenshire North and Moray East and Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey.
“We have shown before that when pro-UK voters unite behind us, the Scottish Conservatives can beat the nationalists.
“The Scottish Conservatives are the only meaningful opposition to the failing SNP Government at Holyrood – with Labour backing the nationalists on gender self-ID, the Hate Crime Act, tax rises and abandoning North Sea oil and gas workers – and we will be campaigning on that record in 2026.”
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