DOUGLAS Ross will today accuse Labour of “playing for Team Sturgeon” at Holyrood and raring to do the same at Westminster, as he tries to give his battered party a fresh sense of purpose ahead of the looming general election.

In his first speech of the New Year, the Scottish Tory leader will insist only his party will fight the Nationalists as “you can’t fit a hair between Labour and the SNP”.

Trying to make a virtue out of his party regularly being isolated at parliament, he will say the other two are part of a “cosy Holyrood consensus”, betraying voters who thought Labour under Anas Sarwar would stand up to Nicola Sturgeon.

He will cite Labour voting with the SNP on gender recognition reforms, hate crime legislation, rent controls and prisoner voting, instead of opposing the Government like the Tories. 

And despite Sir Keir Starmer saying there would be no pact between Labour and the SNP at Westminster after the next election, Mr Ross will say that counts for little, as “a Sturgeon-Starmer alliance already exists”, with Sir Keir regarding Ms Sturgeon as “an inspiration” on policy matters. 

The Moray MP willl also admit the chaotic last year at Westminster under the Tories has damaged his party’s prospects north of the border, while arguing the “quiet competency” of Rishi Sunak means it has now “turned a corner”.

Labour and the SNP mocked Mr Ross, who last year took his party backwards at the council elections and drew scorn for his serial flip-flopping over whether Boris Johnson should be Prime Minister.

Mr Ross will say: “Right across our nation, there are so many people crying out for the end of Nicola Sturgeon and this SNP Government. They see failure stacked upon failure and question how any government can survive it.

“Yet Labour are an opposition to the SNP in name only – they only offer more of the same.

“Anas Sarwar has claimed that he has brought his party back on to the pitch, yet Labour are now playing for Team Sturgeon.

“There needs to be a viable alternative to the cosy Holyrood consensus. Now is the time for the Scottish Conservatives to get back to the task of building Scotland’s real alternative to the SNP – because only we can.”

He will add: “Last year was difficult for the Conservative Party across the UK. To be frank, we haven’t lived up to expectations.

“Our focus, as a UK and Scottish party, must be on working to re-earn trust. Rishi Sunak’s first couple of months in office have shown a return to the quiet competency that voters expect from us.”

Shadow Scottish Secretary Ian Murray, Scotland's only Labour MP, said: “It is going to take more than a few New Year resolutions and a badly delivered speech to make flip-flop Douglas Ross politically relevant.

“His first resolution should be to apologise for backing Liz Truss, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak while the whole country looked on in horror. As we face another year of economic chaos, Scotland knows that the Conservative Party remains the biggest threat to the Union.

“The catastrophic record of the Tory Government is the SNP’s get-out-of-jail card and their number one recruiting sergeant in the campaign to divide the UK.

“We know that with the Tories it is always party first, country second – and people are sick of it.

“Across Scotland and the UK, people are crying out for a change, but only a Labour government can boot the Tories out of Downing Street and deliver it.”

SNP MSP Paul McLennan added: “Douglas Ross only needs to take a look in the mirror to see which party is in cahoots with Labour, given that it was himself and Anas Sarwar who presided over grubby deals between Labour and the Tories after last year’s council elections.

“The Tories and Labour are also joined at the hip in their anti-democratic blocking of Scotland’s right to choose our own future, just as they were back in 2014.

“Worst of all, they are cheek-by-jowl on Brexit – each is as bad as the other in ignoring what Scotland voted for and what is good for our economy and society.

“The Scottish Tory leader also needs to reflect on why it’s his party that so often finds themselves isolated on the political stage, rather than pointing the finger at everyone else.”