Russell Findlay has been announced as the new leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party. The contest has been relatively short, yet remarkably cantankerous. Even those of us, including me, who have been around this peevish party since the start of devolution, have never experienced a leadership election quite like this one.

There is little more that can be said which is so far unsaid. The candidates have conducted themselves well, but those acting, or claiming to act, on a candidate’s behalf, are in the mud. Friendships are over. Respect is lost. But, in the final analysis, the party’s establishment wanted Mr Findlay, and the party establishment has a habit of getting what it wants by any means necessary.

The behaviour of a few chiefs is emphatically not the fault of Mr Findlay, but sweeping up the broken glass will now become his responsibility, and ensuring he does not cut his feet will become his challenge.

Read more by Andy Maciver

Mr Findlay’s impending internal trouble in bringing his group of inflamed MSPs together will unhappily coincide with a requirement to hold on to as many of their 31 seats as possible, and as much of the 23 per cent vote share they enjoyed in 2021 (in July’s General Election, they polled fully 10 per cent less).

The likelihood of Mr Findlay being successful at the ballot box is extremely low, principally because the high watermark of 2021 was based on conditions which no longer exist. The correlation between heightened tensions over independence and the performance of the Tory party is crystal clear. In the 2015 General Election, four years after the election of the Tories’ most celebrated leader Ruth Davidson, the party polled less than 15 per cent, its worst Westminster result ever. Less than a year after a decisive referendum result, independence was not realistically on the table.

In 2016, however, after an SNP landslide put Indyref2 firmly on the table, and the Labour Party was captured by Jeremy Corbyn, who was agnostic on the Union, Baroness Davidson’s vote share suddenly rocketed to well over 20 per cent, where it stayed up to and including the Douglas Ross era. Mr Ross, indeed, increased Baroness Davidson’s vote share in 2021 - an election where Indyref2 was practically the only issue - before being decimated in July amidst a public acceptance that independence was moribund.

This will not change by 2026’s Scottish Parliament elections. Mr Findlay will not have the crutch of independence. But, enough negativity. There is a bright side.

For Mr Findlay to be considered a successful leader, he must establish three Ps: power, policy and positioning.

Firstly, Mr Findlay must make the necessary internal changes to ensure that as well as being in office, he is in power. There is a world of difference between the de jure autonomous management of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party and the de facto leash placed around the neck of the party’s leader by those who sit on green and red benches 350 miles to the south.

Previous leaderships can, and frequently do, protest until the cows come home that they run the Scottish show, but this is detached from reality. People inside the bubble don’t believe it and, more importantly, the people outside the bubble - voters - don’t believe it either.

In this sense, Mr Findlay made an error in rejecting the proposal of his five leadership opponents - Meghan Gallagher, Brian Whittle, Jamie Greene, Murdo Fraser and Liam Kerr - to create an independent commission to look at the internal relationships and power balances within the party. His Westminster supporters, no question, will have leaned heavily on him to do so, but he should ask himself whether they had his or their own best interests at heart.

A smart, rapid signal to his sceptical MSPs would be to confirm that he will take this proposal on.

Then the second P: policy. This should, in theory, be easier, and indeed one major advantage of the healthy resources that Mr Findlay had available during this campaign is that he was able to invest in some policy thought. Some of it was weak; some of it was strong. But at least it is there, and it will give him some foundation from which to build a coherent centre-right platform.

People in Scotland have long told pollsters that they largely support policies similar to those espoused by the Tories, but they run for the hills when they find out the word "Conservative" is attached to them. That will not change, and that is why Mr Findlay will wind up in third place in May 2026, but it is nonetheless important that the centre-right engine must continue to be turned over until the movement realises it needs a new set of wheels to make it go.

The Scottish Tories have missed a trick on school mealsThe Scottish Tories have missed a trick on school meals (Image: PA)

Thirdly, related to policy is the third P: positioning. This may be the hardest for Mr Findlay and the Conservatives to cope with, because it involves being a strategic opposition rather than a reactionary one.

We have two live examples of where they are currently behaving as the latter. One is at Westminster with respect to the means testing of the Winter Fuel Payment, and the other is at Holyrood in their response to the halting of taxpayer-funded meals for P6 and P7 schoolchildren.

Opposition feels instinctively right. But it is never to the strategic advantage of the centre right for political discourse to root itself in taxpayer-funded universalism. Part of the job of the centre-right in opposition is to drag the centre ground to the right.

They should think of this as "common" ground rather than "centre" ground. It is where the bulk of "normal" voters are. It is malleable. But in Scotland, at the moment, it is very firmly rooted to the left of its location in other countries.

Our common ground presumes universal benefits. It presumes higher income tax. It presumes a sceptical environment for business growth. The job of the centre-right is to move it. The job of Russell Findlay is to move it. So the job of Russell Findlay is to become a strategic leader of the opposition, rather than a tactical one.

Andy Maciver is former Head of Communications for the Scottish Conservatives, co-founder of lobbying and PR consultancy Message Matters, and political analyst, strategist, and commentator