From North to South, East to West, I’ve spent the last few weeks on the campaign trail, travelling all over Scotland, seeing everything from beautiful grand landscapes to little side-streets in the smallest villages.
I have to say, I'm glad that the 2024 General Election is now over and I can spend more time in my local area, including speaking to many constituents on my upcoming surgery tour.
But it was a pleasure to be out on the doorsteps all over the country with fantastic Conservative candidates who gave it their all every step of the way.
Of course, there’s no getting away from the fact that the General Election was a difficult night for my party in Scotland and a disaster for Conservatives across the United Kingdom.
The Scottish Conservatives performed respectably on a night where the UK party faced devastating losses of valued colleagues, long-serving constituency Members of Parliament, and former cabinet ministers.
In Scotland, we went into the election with six seats and came out the other side still holding onto five. In incredibly difficult circumstances, losing just one seat was a relatively good performance.
Remarkably, we were just 2000 votes away from gaining a seat. In Aberdeenshire North and Moray East, we were less than 1000 votes behind. And in Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey, we were almost exactly 1000 votes away from winning it. Meanwhile, Reform received several thousand votes in those seats, which sadly helped to elect an SNP MP.
So, had we managed to convince just a few more people to back us, we could have gained a seat while the UK party lost hundreds of constituencies we previously held. We were also not too far behind in several other constituencies in Scotland.
Nobody is pretending that it was a brilliant campaign - it was clearly incredibly difficult at times - but we managed to give a good account of ourselves in Scotland.
In the seats where we narrowly missed out on beating the SNP, the Reform vote was the main issue. As we had warned repeatedly during the campaign, every vote for Reform would only help the SNP. Unfortunately, that proved to be true.
But there were some positives to take from this election. My excellent colleagues Andrew Bowie MP, John Lamont MP and David Mundell MP were re-elected. I am delighted they will be returning to Westminster.
We also managed to get John Cooper elected for the first time as he won the Dumfries and Galloway seat previously held by the former Secretary of State for Scotland, Alister Jack. I look forward to working with John in the future.
And, perhaps best of all, Harriet Cross was able to win the Gordon and Buchan constituency, unseating former SNP MP Richard Thomson. She will make an outstanding local representative for the area.
During this campaign, as Scottish Conservative Deputy Chairwoman, I made it my mission to get all around the country and help as many of our first-class candidates as I possibly could.
I knocked on doors and went leafleting everywhere from Ayrshire to Angus, Banff to the Borders. It really was inspiring to see so many Scottish Conservative activists and volunteers dedicating their own time to help a local candidate.
The other positive of the election was witnessing the SNP going into meltdown and losing dozens of seats.
Independence is now firmly off the table. The SNP put it "page one, line one" of their manifesto, as they constantly reminded everyone. Voters rejected separation emphatically, just as we did in the 2014 referendum.
While it was a sobering night for hardworking colleagues across the UK, we can at least take heart that our long efforts to defeat independence have paid off here in Scotland.
Now, my party must regroup and unite so we can perform at our best in the 2026 Scottish Parliament election.
