We’re starting to get our first impressions of Russell Findlay, the new leader of the Scottish Conservatives, but one of the first things I said to him when I met him the other day was that he’s going to have to overcome the deep-down problem for his party that isn’t easy to fix. He knows it, others have tried and failed, and to be honest it looks like it might be about to get worse before it gets better.

As for Mr Findlay himself, he’s likeable and thoughtful and ordinary, whatever that means, but clearly still adjusting from being a journalist who expresses his views instinctively, with some Fs or Ws and Ps, to being a politician who needs to be more careful about what he says and how. Although I do wonder about that actually: the expectation that politicians suppress the ordinary to be more politiciany. One of the lessons of the US election, like it or not, is that Trump was being himself and speaking his mind and Harris wasn’t, and we know who won.

The proposition Mr Findlay is putting to voters, basically, is that he’s promoting mainstream common-sense views. To pick a few: serious criminals should be sent to prison, you can’t change your biological sex, people who don’t need benefits shouldn’t be getting them, and countries need to keep a tight control on their borders. Some Scots would disagree with all or some of that and deny it’s common sense at all, but go down the pub (although only certain ones), or speak to yer dad (or someone’s dad), or check some of the letters in The Herald, and you’ll realise Mr Findlay’s opinions are pretty mainstream in Scotland and that he might be on to something.

But this is when we get to the deep-down problem because agreeing with Mr Findlay is only one of the steps in the process. For example: I was speaking recently to a family in Glasgow whose youngest son was abused and attacked by four boys because he’s gay. The boy’s parents were angry that no action had been taken against his attackers and Mr Findlay supported them and raised their case in Holyrood when he was the Tories’ justice spokesman.

The family told me they were big fans of Mr Findlay and shared his views on crime and justice: the broadly conservative/traditional/common-sense position that serious crimes should have serious consequences. The interesting thing politically is that the boy’s mother also told me she’d thanked Mr Findlay for his help and agreed with what he’d said about crime and justice and would definitely vote for him “if only he wasn’t a Tory”.

This is the point really for Tories in Scotland. Here’s a family, very typical of lots of working class and middle class families, who have broadly conservative views on a lot of issues and broadly similar views to Mr Findlay. I also think the new leader has a non-posh vibe that would appeal to lots of Scots (he passes the who-would-you-want-to-have-a-pint-with test) and don’t underestimate it: it’s important to be likeable.

But there’s a weird disconnect between the opinions that lots of Scots have and the parties they vote for. I’m constantly struck by the fact that when you speak to people who vote SNP or Labour, and in some cases wouldn’t dream of voting for anyone else, their views are often pretty conservative, particularly on crime, justice and immigration. If you don’t believe me, check out the public attitude surveys which show that broadly speaking, Scots have the same views on these subjects as the English. Scotland more liberal? Don’t make me laugh.

On the face of it, this is promising ground for Mr Findlay but the problem he has to overcome is how to get those conservative Scots to vote for his party and, for a while at least, it looked like the issue of independence was doing it for them under Ruth Davidson; people were switching straight over from Labour to Tory. But not only does Mr Findlay seem pretty uninterested in that strategy (independence is boring, he says), its power and effectiveness is much reduced. In other words, it just doesn’t shift people in their party support in the way it once did.

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Much more influential on Scots is the abiding distaste many of us have for the idea of the Tories. Mr Findlay told me “Tory” was the ultimate four-letter word in Scotland but that it didn’t make sense to him and he wasn’t prepared to accept it. But how to overcome it? The current widespread distaste started in the 60s and 70s and accelerated under Margaret Thatcher (English, a woman, and a Tory, it did not go well) and so deep did it go in some cases that it’s been passed down the generations. Mr Findlay called it the idea of the Tories as pantomime villains but it’s profound and even though lots of people actually agree with Tory policies and ideas, it’s hard to shift.

What further complicates matters is the thing that's been happening further to the right of Scottish politics. You may have noticed the results of the council by-elections in Glasgow the other day and, although the turnout was very low, it showed the SNP vote falling and Labour’s vote static or falling but also support for Reform growing. Across the three elections, Reform picked up more than 1,000 first preference votes, polling between 13 and 18% in each and finishing third overall.

What this means, with all the usual caveats about by-elections, is that we’re very likely to see some Reform MSPs in Holyrood after the next election, but it also poses some real-life problems for Mr Findlay in his new job; this is what I meant when I said things could be about to get worse for the Tories rather than better. Weirdly, so deep is the dislike of the Conservatives, even though Mrs Thatcher was a very, very long time ago, that many voters may feel more willing and able to vote for a new party further to the right like Reform than an old party that’s further to the centre like the Tories. Nigel Farage has been able to project the idea that he’s new and different and for quite a lot of people, it’s worked.

(Image: Nigel Farage's Reform has been picking up votes in Scotland)

Perhaps Mr Findlay could attempt a similar “new and different” approach with the Tories, but it’s going to be hard for a party that has so much on its shoulders, both ancient (Thatcher) and modern (Truss). Alternatively, he could do the “outsider” vibe at Holyrood – “I’ve never been a professional politician like all the others” – but again, with the exception maybe of Trump, it only works for a while before voters lump you into the same category as every other politician; it’s hard to be an outsider on the inside. He could also try and distance himself from the English Tories, which was Murdo Fraser’s strategy, but I could never see Scottish voters buying it: Tory is Tory.

Which only leaves one option for the new leader, which is to calmly explain his policies and try to overcome the Tory cliches by pointing out the details and the nuances. For example, he is opposed to universal benefits but also opposed to a “cliff-edge” where people who narrowly miss out lose everything. On justice as well, he believes prison works but also believes rehabilitation has never been properly applied and should be. I didn’t properly appreciate these details til I spoke to him and he needs to say it more.

The potential positive for Mr Findlay in the end is that the political landscape is definitely more changeable and lots of Scots do agree with him, even ones that currently vote Labour or SNP. Of course, there will always be those who say “I’d vote for you if only you weren’t a Tory” – this stuff runs deep in Scotland. But maybe, in time, the instinctive Tory klaxon will stop going off in people’s heads and they’ll start to think: actually, this is what I think, I agree, it makes sense, I might vote for him. Don’t ask me how long it could take though. I don’t know.