Achieving change in Scotland requires voting against the SNP - Brian Monteith

This week brings the business end of the general election campaign where people need to decide what they really want to achieve and how best to make it happen.

Over the last five years there have been many moments when railing against the Conservative government could be justified. I have outlined many of them myself in this column, all of them have involved a breach of trust. Conservatives have been good at making attractive promises but even better at then doing the opposite.

In advance of the 2019 election public expectations were intentionally created that we could expect better from the Conservatives than they had managed in the previous four years after waving the Liberal Democrats adieu. If the truth be told, for many Conservative supporters the Liberal Democrats appear to have left an unwelcome influence over the party, well beyond the ending of that coalition of mutual convenience. It’s as if they never left.

Instead of the hoody-hugging social liberalism of David Cameron, Boris Johnson offered economic liberalism based on prudent finances, lower taxes and less regulation that would create the conditions for wealth creation to improve our public services and strengthen our defences.

Instead of the sub-optimal Brexit-lite EU departure offered by Theresa May we were offered a free-trade orientated agreement with promised benefits for our fishing communities and a competitive divergence from unwelcome EU laws we had never supported in Brussels.

Instead of the continued route march of the Nanny State towards the Bully State we were sold the idea of again being treated as adults able to make decisions for ourselves and follow our own paths.

On every expectation the Conservatives have let us down badly. Good intentions butter no parsnips. Johnson revealed himself to be a big spender at heart, attracted to grand projects that could be delivered with a flourish. He would have made a better French President than a British Prime Minister.

While the EU trade deal was better than anything previously negotiated with the EU by anyone – a soft, not hard, Brexit if ever there was one – it was still sub-optimal. Our fisheries were brutally let down again and initial plans for axing thousands of needless laws were abandoned.

In seeking to correct Johnson’s economic failings Liz Truss tried to do too much too soon without support behind her. After replacing her Rishi Sunak abandoned any Tory pretence at exploiting the many Brexit opportunities, but worse, enshrined the temporary Northern Ireland Protocol with his hideous Windsor Agreement that maintains a customs and regulatory border between constituent parts of the United Kingdom.

For all of them, however, comes their role in bestowing the two national lockdowns and many mini-restrictions that shut down our economy, consigned our public services to serious harm and ruined the lives of many.

And yet for all their incompetence, the self-indulgent infighting and the economic harm, were I living in a Scottish constituency with a Conservative MP I would vote Tory.

And despite the fact that Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party repeatedly urged the Conservative government to follow even worse economic policies by spending more money needlessly, taxing more voraciously and shutting the country down and locking us up in our homes harder and longer, were I living in a Scottish constituency where Labour is placed second to the SNP I would vote Labour.

For if there is one abiding lesson that Scots should take on board over the last decade and more it is that the SNP puts its own self-preservation first. It must therefore be repudiated in this election to help propel it towards its eventual defeat in 2026.

For when it comes to the everyday questions of running our health service; providing drug rehabilitation facilities; improving education standards; helping provide more houses to let or buy; building new roads and repairing the existing network – it is the SNP that is responsible and its politicians who must be held accountable. Blaming Westminster austerity is a deceit of the highest rank as the projections for UK public spending show.

Everyone can be angry about the perceived wrongs done to them by this Conservative UK government, but the bigger question is: what will be the outcome of how you vote? Will it help achieve the change you might want or will it by unintended consequence reward those who would rip our country apart and visit upon us a scorched earth austerity without a Marshall Plan to turn it around?

It is the SNP who have ruled Scotland and weaponised the pandemic for their own reputation – and then sought to cover up and deny their intentions. It is the SNP who tried to eliminate the rights of women, want us locked up for thinking and saying the observable truths of sexual differences, shuttered the private rental sector, cut back on social housing and relegated their day job while glorifying at home and abroad their minority pursuit of secession. If we must pass judgment on any politicians it should be with those from the SNP.

While voting Reform UK in England and Wales will hold Conservatives to account and provide an alternative opposition to Starmer’s Labour, voting Reform UK in Scotland only makes sense in constituencies where it would not help the SNP win. It will, however, be a far different scenario in two years’ time when the Holyrood elections come.

Conservative MPs in Scotland have been on the right side of the big issues in Scotland more often than not. The resignations of Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf would not have come about were it not for Conservative Scottish Secretary Alister Jack’s brave decisions to challenge an illegal referendum, to veto the Gender Recognition Act and block the Deposit Return Scheme.

Achieving real change in Scotland requires the defeat of the SNP, how that is delivered will depend on which constituency you live in. The choice is yours.

Brian Monteith is a former member of the Scottish and European parliaments.