Ruth Davidson ‘parking tanks on Alex Salmond’s lawn’ as Tories eye former First Minister’s Westminster seat

ALEX SALMOND’S Westminster seat was last night on Ruth Davidson’s hit-list after the Tories won a town hall seat in his back yard.

Party insiders said the Scottish Conservatives leader was “parking her tanks on Alex Salmond’s lawn” after ousting an SNP councillor in Inverurie.

Miss Davidson said: “We won the local government election in Gordon this week, beating the SNP into second place. It means that in this seat, as in many others, it is a two-horse race between us and the Nationalists.”

But First Minister Nicola Sturgeon hit back, branding claims the Tories were a threat to the SNP “ludicrous” and that Miss Davidson risked being left with “egg on her face”.

She said: “The Tories chose to fight the election on the issue of an independence referendum, they talked about nothing else, they didn’t have any policies for local government.

“So they put that issue centre stage and they lost the election. They came second in the election and the SNP came first.

“If you’re going to put a single issue at the centre of your own campaign, then you lose the election, then you’re left with a bit of egg on your face and I think the Tories have egg on their face on that question this morning.

“They’ve had a good day by their standards but we’ve got to put it into context.

“The Tories polled a lower share of the vote in Scotland than Jeremy Corbyn did in England so, yes, a good performance from a low starting point but it’s Labour that the Tories have taken support from, not the SNP.”

Her bullish stance was echoed by SNP number-crunchers who last night claimed they had attracted 105,000 more votes than at the last council elections in 2012.

Meanwhile, leading pollster Professor John Curtice said claims of a Tory resurgence could be overblown – and that the contest to be Scotland’s biggest pro-Union party was not yet won.

Miss Davidson’s party scooped 276 council seats and pushed Labour, with 14 fewer, into third place overall, while the SNP remained Scotland’s largest party, taking home 431 seats.

Professor Curtice said the Tories had failed to open a large gap between them and Labour, and that Kezia Dugdale’s party was “down but not out”.

He said: “The SNP got 32% of the Scotland-wide vote, well below what it got in the 2011, 2015 or 2016 elections.

“I’m not sure the Conservatives have moved as far ahead of Labour as perhaps they might have hoped. Therefore, although the Labour Party is down I don’t think it is yet out.

“We wait to see what the future of unionism is going to be north of the Border.

“The worry for the SNP is not that they’re not going to remain the largest party on June 8 – it would be very surprising if that changed – but that they are indeed vulnerable in individual constituencies where the unionist vote does seem to be congregating around a particular party.

“In some places that is going to be the Conservatives, maybe one or two others.”

Professor Curtice said SNP deputy leader Angus Robertson’s Moray seat was under threat while the Tories were favourites to take Calum Kerr’s Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk constituency.

“There is no doubt, given that the SNP are doing no more than treading water, they are potentially vulnerable to the Conservatives in these seats,” he said.

But he stressed other pro-Union parties still stood a chance of ousting the SNP, including the Lib Dems via Jo Swinson in East Dunbartonshire.

He also reckoned Ian Murray, Labour’s sole remaining Scottish MP after the 2015 General Election, could also hang on in Edinburgh South.

“The SNP ended up with pretty much the same number of councillors as they had in 2012,” he said.