John Lamont MSP

In Scotland, the One Nation Conservatism is not often talked about in political circles and even less amongst the electorate, but it is a concept which is very relevant for modern day Scottish political dynamics.

To me, One Nation Conservatism is the articulation of our values of fairness and opportunity. It’s about British values of fair play, conservative values of helping up those in need while clearing the way for people to aspire to greater things and explore new horizons. It’s about making sure people can take their own decisions, giving them freedom, choice and leaving more money in their pockets so they can make the choices about the needs of their families, rather than the State taking decisions on their behalf without their consent.

However, it’s not just about getting the State out of the way. Individual liberty is crucial, but while all individuals should be equally free, not everyone is equally empowered to take advantage of those freedoms in the same way. The state doesn’t have all the answers, but government can be a force for good.

As a Scottish politician, I believe the need to deliver the One Nation message is greatest north of the border. Scottish politics differs from the rest of the UK because of the presence and dominance of the SNP. Like the Labour Party under Corbyn, the SNP’s moral superiority is both misguided and dreadful to watch.

Let’s look at education. It’s a scandal in Scotland that a child from our poorest area is twenty times less likely to get the grades they need to go to a good university than a child in our more affluent areas. The effect of this is that despite the much praised (by the SNP) policy of free university education, students from poorer backgrounds are the less likely to go to university than in any other part of the UK.

Free university education is a classic SNP idea, a middle class freebie, tarted up as a progressive policy, but which has had the opposite effect in Scotland and means funds have been slashed elsewhere in the education budget.

The Scottish Conservative view is different. We want to bring in a graduate contribution to be used to back bursaries for poorer students and to reverse the SNP cuts on colleges. This is a classic One Nation policy, one which rejects hand outs to those who don’t need them, but gives a helping hand and support to those seeking to better themselves.

In Scotland there was a time when socialism stood for self-help, community strength and empowerment through education. The tragedy of socialism is that in the post-war era it became an ideology of welfarism and indebtedness. More recently, this has manifested itself in an SNP Government whose default position is one of universalism. So much so, that they think it’s a good use of public money to hand out free prescriptions to everyone, regardless of their salaries, or to spread our social services thinly by requiring every single child under the age of 18 to have a state sponsored guardian.

As everyone will have noticed, nationalism has been a dominant force in Scotland, rearing its ugly head in the past few years, seeking to pit one part of our nation against the other. I believe we should reject the grievance and division of nationalist politics and should embrace the differences which exist across the UK while recognising that in diversity lies strength. That is what One Nation Conservatism should be all about.

Scotland is crying out for an alternative approach and that approach should come from One Nation Conservatism. The polls suggest One Nation Conservatism has an opportunity to become the only credible alternative against a nationalist movement that claims our differences are irreconcilable, and an extreme left-wing ideology which can only make our decline irreversible.