Scottish Conservative Party

The Scottish Conservative Party is the part of the British Conservative Party that operates in Scotland. Like the UK party, it has a centre-right political philosophy which promotes conservatism and strong British Unionism. Its leader in the Scottish Parliament is Ruth Davidson MSP, who has held the post since 2011.

It was established in 1965, when the previously separate Unionist Party was merged into the Conservative Party of England and Wales, to form the basis of the modern UK Conservative Party. The Unionist Party (unionist in the sense of preserving the United Kingdom), in alliance with a small number of Liberal Unionist and National Liberal politicians, had always taken the Conservative whip at Westminster and had been the dominant force in Scottish politics from the 1930s to the late 1950s. The last time that the Conservatives won the most seats in Scotland was in the general election of 1955. From the early 1960s that role was taken by the Labour Party and the Scottish Conservatives went into a state of decline, which culminated in the loss of all Scottish Conservative seats in 1997.

The Scottish Conservatives have yet to see a revival of fortunes following the 1997 wipeout; only one Conservative MP was returned to Westminster for a Scottish constituency at the general elections of 2001, 2005 and 2010. In the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish Conservatives currently control 16 of the 129 seats, with 12 of these seats won through the system of proportional representation. The party has one of the six Scottish seats in the European Parliament. In March 2006, the party was thought to have around 16,500 members in Scotland. By mid-2011, party membership fell to 8,500.