Annabel Goldie - leader of the Scottish Conservatives

Question: What are you aiming for in May’s elections?

Goldie: What we’re aiming for is progress. I’m not going to be drawn on specific numbers of seats because my main concern is to improve the influence we already have in the Scottish parliament.

Interestingly, Scottish politics provides one very clear political opportunity - in the Scottish parliament we have three main parties which are to the left of the centre, we’ve got one or two parties that are very much to the left of centre, but the only party that is to the traditional right of centre is the Scottish Conservative Party.

If you look at the voting record of the different parties in this term of the parliament from 2003 to the current time, what emerges is extremely interesting. The SNP, the biggest opposition presence which under Alex Salmond is saying it’s going to be the saviour of Scotland post-May in fact has proved to be a completely impotent and meaningless opposition because they’ve managed in the course of seven-and-a-half years to oppose only seven Scottish executive bills. Now that’s not being an opposition, that’s being part of the problem.

My party has tried to make clear we’ve opposed far more executive bills, we’ve refused for example to sign up to the creation of unnecessary quangos, we have questioned areas where the Scottish Executive in typical socialist fashion wants to use the state to intervene or use the state to direct, we’ve said hands off, that’s not the way to deal with a strong sensible society.

Question: David Cameron recently wrote in the Herald that the Conservatives had “let down” Scottish voters. Did you take that as a criticism of your performance?

Goldie: No. David Cameron goes out of his way to make that very clear. When he says that the Conservatives have maybe not always got it right in respect of Scotland it’s absolutely clear when you read his comments and the whole article that he’s looking over a span of time of maybe 10, 12, 15 years.

He’s pointing out that we have already elected MPs, and he’s saying these MPs are Scottish nationalist MPs, they’re coming from areas where you would expect there to be a traditional Scottish Conservative vote. Now clearly that has stemmed not just from the last two or three years but over a decade or more and he was merely pointing out that he thinks there have been times when the Scottish Conservatives and the Conservatives in general have perhaps not best identified what the Scottish need is.

He goes out of his way to say, and I very much appreciate his endorsement and his support, that he thinks that actually the Scottish Conservatives at the moment are providing a very sensible approach. I think he described my approach as a get my sleeves up and get on with the business that needs to be done, I’m delighted, that to me is one of the more positive and flattering descriptions that could be given to any politician.

Question: What’s stopping these centre-right voters from backing the Conservatives?

Goldie: You have to understand the quirks of the Scottish political territory, you have to remember that in 1997 the Conservatives lost every MP they had. Now don’t underestimate the impact that had on the party in Scotland, humiliation doesn’t come much more keenly than that, and it’s also creates an exceedingly difficult practical situation to fight back from because what’s your political mandate, what’s your political authority, your credibility.

So I think we have to understand the perspective on which the Conservatives are operating. Many people in Scotland felt in 97 they had in some way managed to exculpate their consciences or whatever they thought they were doing by getting every Conservative MP out of Scotland.

And there was then a general feeling that a great new wave of different political thinking had come in and the consequences of this for Scotland would be unrelenting progress, visible and tangible achievements, and a very significant improvement in the provision of our public services and the way we conduct ourselves.

It ain’t been so, and because it ain’t been so, people quite rightly in Scotland have become both angry, frustrated and disillusioned and of course it’s that climate that Alex Salmond as a seasoned politician has seized upon to argue that what the Liberal Democrats and the Labour party have failed to do in Holyrood he can answer, correct and remedy by offering independence but that’s nonsense.

The real solution to our problem lies in respecting the devolved parliament, respecting the powers it has and making sure that these powers are used much more sensibly and much more effectively to deliver a better quality of life in Scotland, which these powers are perfectly capable of delivering, but which they will never achieve in terms of delivery for as long as we have this socialist grip from both Labour and the Liberal Democrats and the SNP.

These are three very left wing parties, much more left wing than anything you’ll find at Westminster. My argument is we’ve got to get away from the state intervention, from the stifling overwhelming control that the devolved government and its devolved quangos through the hand of other politicians tells everybody what they’ve got to do.

Question: What policies will you be highlighting ahead of the May 3 elections?

Goldie: The overriding theme I’ve been talking about for the last year or more has been that we have too many politicians in Scotland, I think the public thinks we have too many. We have 129 MSPs, the Scotland Act always envisaged we would have 108 and I think that was sensible, I think we should go back to 108 MSPs because if we did that there’s not a shadow of a doubt there would a completely renewed focus on what the actual priorities are for the people of Scotland, not what the perceived priorities of certain politicians are.

Question: Could you have any fewer?

Goldie: It would be difficult to go any lower – it would be difficult, there is a point where you have to be realistic about how you run a sustainable parliament, and if you consider this is a unicameral legislature with no revising chamber, essential pre-legislative scrutiny and essential legislative scrutiny has to be undertaken by committees for example.

You have to make sure you’ve always got a cohort of MSPs in here who can get on with the basic essential jobs that are necessary to run an effective parliament. But it would lead to a reduced ministerial presence, and I think we’ve got an excessive ministerial presence at the moment with all the attendant costs to the taxpayer of sustaining that regime

Question: A nationalist victory is being widely talked of, who do you blame that on?

I put it firmly on the lap of Labour and the Liberal Democrats because they were given something very precious. They were actually given a devolved legislature, to get it up and running, and to demonstrate to the people of Scotland who had voted on a referendum for this just how much better life could be with a Scottish parliament attending to these issues. Now they failed to do that.

If you come up to Scotland every second person you bump into will lament the state of law and order in Scotland, will lament the state of the health service in Scotland, will lament the extent to which drugs abuse has corroded our society, the business community will lament the state of education and the standards of literacy and numeracy coming out of our schools, and many parents and young people where they’re trying to get their toe on the first rung of the property ladder will lament the challenges of trying to find an affordable house.

Now I don’t think that’s the kind of Scotland people thought they were getting when Labour and Liberal Democrats said we’ll form a government and make life better for you.

Question: You’re talking about re-enlivening the Conservative message. Cameron has been credited with doing this to a certain extent in England, can he do the same in Scotland?

Goldie: David Cameron is very popular with our membership in Scotland just as he is with his membership south of the border. What we all accept is that the effect David has had on the electorate does begin to get a little less as you had north through England, so actually you’ll find that there’s really nor difference between the situation in Scotland and frankly an area of England north of the Midlands.

Now that’s just a measure of the challenges which do confront us, I think David Cameron has been superbly good news for the party, I think he’s brought a vibrancy and a dynamism and excitement. Of course in the context of Westminster he’s got something very important which is he’s now seen as a credible alternative to Blair and Brown and the Conservatives are seen as an alternative government to Labour.

But that dynamic of course doesn’t work for the Conservatives in the environment of the Scottish Parliament, because we are in the Scottish Parliament the third party, we’re a small party and the dynamic that’s working for us so well for us in Westminster is perversely the one that’s now working well for Alex Salmond and the nationalists in Scotland.

The Cameron effect is less visible perhaps, but its exactly the same situation we have in the north of England. David Cameron is popular up here and one of the things he said to me early on is ‘What is the best thing I can do for you?’. And I said get yourself up to Scotland as much as possible, and I’m delighted to see that’s exactly what he’s doing.

There is an influence provided by David, there is a dynamic running from his leadership of the party, it’s positive but as always in politics you need to be realistic about the construction of the political territory as you go further north through Britain, and certainly as you come into Scotland where it does get challenging for the Conservatives.

We’ve never denied that but we do think that it’s very important for democracy that we continue to offer what’s not available from any of the other parties, and that is a right-of-centre political perspective with sensible policies.

Question: You’ve said you don’t think there’s a real desire for independence, so is the nationalist threat illusory?

Goldie: I wouldn’t use the word illusory. The nationalist threat is there, but it has been grossly exaggerated. The argument that there is some desire for independence in Scotland has been grossly inflated by Alex Salmond for political self interest. What he’s done is seen all this dismay and disaffection by voters with Labour and the Lib Dems and he’s tried to exploit it to his own political advantage.

The media has tended to portray the May elections as some kind of contest between Salmond and Jack McConnell, now that’s a very primitive representation of the political situation because I don’t think it is as easy as that, I don’t think there is a bandwagon running for independence.

Question: Would you vote to support, if not formally join in coalition, a minority Lib Dem/Labour collation to stop the nationalists taking power?

Goldie: What I’ve said is that it’s very important to recognise there is an option of the single biggest party running a minority administration. Now without saying who that party is, I have said I don’t think it will be the Scottish Conservative Party – it would take a minor electoral miracle, and while I have no doubt we’ll get there in due course I don’t see it happening in May.

What I have said is that a minority administration, and there is precedent for that happening, in New Zealand for example, I think it would be a more honest form of government than the coalition.

Question: You mentioned David Cameron's visits to Scotland, do these make a difference to the party north of the border?

Goldie: David Cameron is always a very popular visitor to Scotland, warmly received by the party and increasingly received with great interest by the voters. On his last visit he and I were walking along Princes St in Edinburgh, I thought I was in the company of George Clooney or Ewan McGregor, because people were rushing forward, they wanted to speak to him, they wanted their photograph taken with them.

He provides a stimulus and an interest which I think politics in the UK is needing, he has got this undeniable charismatic touch.

I think he does have a golden touch about him, so I’m very keen he takes his golden touch and adds it to the Goldie touch in Scotland and between us we hope to take things forward.