THE Tories are on the offensive, despite calls not to politicise the pandemic being an almost constant refrain at Holyrood right now.
Unfortunately for the Scottish Conservatives, their ray of sunshine of a new leader, Douglas Ross, has had almost no effect on their performance in the polls.
A Panelbase poll conducted one month before Jackson Carlaw resigned as party leader predicted the Tories would gather 20% of the votes at next year’s Holyrood election.
The most recent poll, conducted one month after Ross took the helm, predicted the Tories would take 20% of the votes at next year’s Holyrood election.
The Tories are “strong and stable” in one regard at least.
In an effort to boost those numbers, and catch up to an SNP which hasn’t polled below 50% since December last year, the Tories have created a four-page leaflet.
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In a subtle effort to make Ross more recognisable to the public, the leaflet has seven pictures of the Moray MP across its four small pages.
In two of those, Ross is following the time-honoured political tradition of dressing like a builder.
No doubt in an effort to prove his working class roots, Ross also tells us that he used to work on a dairy farm and wake up at 2am every morning (which is incredibly early even for a dairy farmer). Maybe he had a long commute.
To be fair, the Rosses do seem to be a hard-working family. To quote the leaflet: “Douglas and his wife Krystle, who is a police sergeant, have a one year old son Alistair. He’s a qualified football referee ...”
Whichever way you vote, a one-year-old football referee is impressive.
The whole leaflet is peppered with references to “uncertainty” and “division” coming from calls for indyref2. Brexit, which has of course only brought the UK together, isn’t mentioned once in the entire thing.
You can meet Mr Ross yourself here, and tell us your thoughts on the Tories' efforts below:
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