Shane Painter is the former Scottish Conservative Candidate in Orkney & Shetland and sits on the Scottish Young Conservative Board.
Many see our electoral defeat as a setback. I see it as an opportunity to reinvent and revitalise our party.
As the youngest Scottish Conservative candidate in the recent election, I’ve witnessed first-hand the disconnect between our party and young voters. While canvassing, I encountered surprise – even shock – that a young person like myself would align with the Conservatives. This reaction speaks volumes about the perception problem we face.
Our party took a hammering across Scotland, with our vote share collapsing by half. We’re now the fourth Scottish party in Westminster. If we don’t act decisively to broaden our appeal, particularly to younger generations, we risk condemning ourselves to political irrelevance.
My generation has grown up constantly hearing ourselves talked down, dismissed, and ignored. We’re told there might not be a state pension when we reach retirement age (likely in our late 80s), yet we’re expected to fund pensions for today’s retirees without complaint.
We sacrificed what we were told would be the best years of our lives during the pandemic. Our university experience became an expensive Netflix subscription – with few options.
And our thanks for this sacrifice? Suggestions that our generation doesn’t care enough and should be subjected to national service. Our dreams of home ownership remain just that, dreams, while we watch pensioners turn out in force to block new housing developments.
It’s time for older generations to recognise how good they really had it, to accept that the social contract is broken, and to acknowledge their role in breaking it.
The Conservative Party cannot afford to ignore these realities any longer. Our traditional voter base is literally dying off. Between 2019 and 2024, we lost ten per cent of our 2019 voters to the Grim Reaper. The age at which voters are more likely to support Conservatives over Labour has risen from 42 in 2019 to 64 today. This trend is unsustainable.
We can no longer rely solely on being the party of the Union – that message alone won’t cut it. While preserving the Union remains crucial, we must go beyond this singular focus. It’s time for us to shout proudly about our core Conservative values: creating opportunity, rewarding risk-taking, and trusting people – not government – to manage their own lives.
We need to articulate a vision for Scotland that encompasses economic growth, personal liberty, and community empowerment within the context of a strong United Kingdom. By broadening our message, we can appeal to voters who share our values but may have been turned off by a narrowly unionist focus.
To secure our future, the Scottish Conservatives must take bold, decisive action.
We need to champion a complete overhaul of the planning system to enable the construction of more homes. Our education policies must tackle the cap on university places in Scotland, and propose solutions to the crushing tax burden facing young graduates. We must develop economic policies that create jobs, support entrepreneurship, and foster growth that benefits young Scots.
This means actively recruiting and promoting young Conservative voices and candidates, ensuring our party’s face and policies resonate with the next generation. Crucially, we must honestly address the intergenerational imbalances in our society, proposing solutions that don’t unfairly burden the young to benefit the old.
It’s crucial to recognise that young people’s ambition, drive, and determination are no less than any generation that came before us. In fact, speaking with many young Scots, I’ve found that they are natural conservatives – they simply haven’t realised it, because our party hasn’t reached out to them.
These young people want to work hard, set up businesses, take risks, and keep the rewards of their efforts. They care deeply about our communities and understand that decisions are best made locally, while also recognising our unique and important role on the international stage.
Young Scots believe in opportunities won on merit, not protected characteristics. They seek a fair playing field where their talents and efforts can shine. The Conservative Party’s core values of personal responsibility, free enterprise, and community empowerment align perfectly with these aspirations – but we have failed to make this connection clear.
The Scottish Conservatives stand at a crossroads. We can either evolve to become a party that speaks to the aspirations and concerns of young voters, or we can fade into political obscurity. The choice is clear. It’s time for bold action to rebuild a dynamic, forward-looking Scottish Conservative Party, one that offers hope and opportunity to all generations of Scots.
Our party’s future depends on our willingness to listen to and fight for young people. We must demonstrate that conservative principles offer the best path to the prosperous, fair, and dynamic Scotland they envision. If we fail to do so, we’ll not only lose elections, we’ll lose our relevance in shaping Scotland’s future.
The time for change is now. Let’s build a Scottish Conservative Party that truly delivers on the dreams of young Scots.
