Rachael Hamilton: Being a farmer was a boy’s job – whilst I was furiously a feminist, I still had these old-fashioned views

The first vote that the Scottish Conservative deputy leader Rachael Hamilton ever cast was for the Green Party, which might come as a surprise to her adversaries in the Scottish Parliament.

“It was the Westminster election when I was 18. I was so into the environment because I was about to become an agronomist – I knew from the age of 14 I wanted to be an agronomist – it was very much about saving the planet,” she explains.

“It wasn’t until I got my first proper job that I realised that the Green taxation policy was just literally going to wipe me out of any money that I ever had. I suppose I realised that whatever you believe a party is about, you really have to look a lot deeper before you put the tick in the box. It was a bit of a lesson for me.”

Despite this brief, youthful dalliance with a party she now labels “extremist”, Hamilton has been actively involved in the Scottish Conservatives for almost two decades. She joined her local association in the Borders in the mid-noughties and became John Lamont’s campaign manager in 2008. Her first attempt to stand for elected office was in 2013, in a council by-election for Leaderdale and Melrose. While she didn’t win – narrowly losing out to the Borders Party in the eighth round – she describes the campaign experience as “quite addictive”. It spurred her to put herself forward for debates on independence the following year, before entering Holyrood in 2016.

My family life was very wholesome, and the women played – strangely, for those days – an integral part in business and work

It was her sheer love of political debate – and the fact that when she looked around the room she noticed she was “one of very few women” – that took her there. She credits her granny for that. “My granny was a card-carrying Conservative member. She looked at it from two angles – one, because of the values that she shared with the Conservative Party, but two… she looked upon it as a social aspect as well.”

That was particularly important, because Hamilton’s grandmother was widowed young – her husband died at 32 of Hodgkin’s lymphoma – and was left with five children to raise. Being a member of the local Conservative association helped broaden her social circle after that loss.

“I would like to see more of that in politics,” Hamilton says. “I think we’ve lost that since the pandemic. Even when I moved to the Borders and I became a volunteer and joined a local party, it was the same ethos that my granny had about meeting like-minded people, talking about potential policies and things like that, I really enjoyed that. It was a bit of a mirror of what she did.”

Having a strong female presence at the head of the household has filtered down the generations, and Hamilton describes growing up in a “strong female family network”. She spent the first three years of her life living with her granny, her mum and her mum’s siblings in rural Wales because her mum got pregnant “quite young” – “I would effectively call myself a mistake,” she jokes – before her parents ultimately got together.

“It was quite a thing in those days. I think mum had to be very resilient, but she supported my dad like nothing else throughout her whole life. She’s 76 now, she still does the farm books, she still goes out and feeds the calves in the morning at 7am, she’s very strong, and they work very much as a family unit.”

Hamilton spent most of her childhood on that family farm in Herefordshire. Everyone had a role to play in making the business a success, but it was her mum who “kept everything going”. I ask if that is what instilled her feminist values.

“My family life was very wholesome, and the women played – strangely, for those days – an integral part in business and work. All of my aunts have had good careers but they also were the homemakers, and I feel very much the same. I feel like my family comes first. I’m very much a homemaker; I love cooking, I love a tidy house. But I also like to be able to thrive in [the parliament]. So if all those boxes are ticked at home, just like my mum, then I can do my thing here.”

That strong family connection meant Hamilton was initially very hesitant to leave the Welsh borders behind. After training in agronomy at Harper Adams College in Shropshire she applied for a graduate role in a UK-wide firm. “I got the job, and I read the letter, and I was horrified to find that I’d be located in the north-east,” she recalls. That covered everywhere between Aberdeen and North Yorkshire, with the satellite office in Morpeth.

It’s a tough and rough job, but it’s highly rewarding

She didn’t intend on taking it, even hiding the letter on top of the kitchen cabinet so no one would find out. When she eventually came clean to her dad, he was over the moon. “I said, ‘but dad, it’s in the north-east’. He said, ‘don’t be ridiculous, you’d be absolutely daft to turn that down’. He pushed me towards it.

“I could have had a very different life because he offered me, when I was 16, that I could take on the farm. I said I can’t do that; my brother needs to do that. I had it in my head that being a farmer was a boy’s job. Whilst I was furiously a female feminist and also very, very independent, I still had these old-fashioned views that were shaped by what I saw around me.”

And so she moved north, briefly to Newcastle and then finally settling in the Kelso area – where she’s been ever since. Despite the initial wrench of moving away from her family, she tells me she “felt so at home” in the Borders from the start. “It literally is a carbon copy of where I grew up. It’s got the rolling hills, it’s got the river, it’s got the rurality, lots of friendly people, communities and farmers, little towns.”

She chose to raise her own family there – three daughters, aged between 17 and 27 (all of whom still live at home) – and now co-owns a successful hotel business with her husband. But it’s not always been easy. She was a single mother in her 20s after the breakdown of her first marriage and recalls once having her shopping bought by a stranger because she didn’t have enough money in her purse to cover the bill. While she returned to pay him back the same day, the experience is still something which affects her deeply.

It is, perhaps, why she is so involved in the Women2Win programme which aims to increase the number of female Tory politicians. She argues that many of the barriers that prevent women returning to work after becoming mothers are the same as those that prevent them from entering politics, such as a lack of good childcare or flexible working opportunities. She hopes that, as a female parliamentarian on the frontline, she is a role model for other women. “It becomes easier, and you become bolder and you gain confidence, you know the system so you can become more effective, and I think it’s about explaining to women, don’t be daunted. Don’t be daunted by doing this job. It’s a tough and rough job, but it’s highly rewarding.”

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Having now been an MSP for nearly nine years, I ask about her proudest moments. She replies by first setting out how “frustrating” the Scottish Parliament can be. “When you’ve worked in the private sector, you’re very results-driven and you’re very outcome-focused. I’m very well-meaning in the way that I go into legislation or to drive policy through, but sometimes it’s just not possible because there aren’t the numbers, there’s not the support.”

She continues: “I’ve learnt so much since 2016, and that’s about not taking myself too seriously, not getting hung up over some of the frustrations that I have in the parliament but working diligently and with resilience to try to get the small wins.”

Those small victories include forcing the Scottish Government to U-turn on highly protected marine areas and on wood-burning stove legislation – two policies within her previous remit as shadow rural affairs secretary. But her biggest “small win” comes from outwith that portfolio: preventing the Gender Recognition Reform Bill becoming law.

It wasn’t until we saw that picture of Isla Bryson in pink leggings – it was a dawn of realisation

That bill is something Hamilton keeps coming back to throughout our conversation. She mentions it four times in the space of an hour, unprompted. Her strength of feeling about the proposed introduction of self-identification meant she took on the unusual role of being her party’s spokesperson specifically for that one bill. While she was unsuccessful in stopping its passage, she did play a vital role getting then Scottish Secretary Alister Jack to make a Section 35 order to prevent it receiving royal assent.

She believes such legislation comes from an increasing gap between the will of the Scottish Parliament and the will of the Scottish people. “Look at Nicola Sturgeon,” she says. “She had no idea that the public were completely opposed to the reforms she was going to bring through, and it wasn’t until we saw that picture of Isla Bryson in pink leggings – it was a dawn of realisation. The public understood how dangerous some of the reforms could have been in terms of men getting access to women’s spaces.”

Part of the reason for that mismatch, she argues, is because several parties are “crowding the left-wing socialist party space”. She accuses the SNP and Labour of working “hand in glove”, particularly following the news earlier this month that Anas Sarwar is instructing his MSPs to abstain on the budget. But she says in some respects this is proving “quite helpful” because it’s creating some “clear blue water” between them and her own party ahead of 2026.

Given current polling, I suggest the next election is going to be a tough one for the party. It is expected to lose its second place position, and may even struggle for third depending on how well Reform UK does. Hamilton insists that “it’ll be difficult for everybody”. “If we have another party fielding candidates, they will target not just us, they’ll target Alba, the SNP and Labour. That could then have an impact on the overall make-up in the parliament.”

The polling, though, doesn’t just reflect the threat of Reform to her party – but also a lack of trust in the Conservatives across the UK. And while undoubtedly events south of the border in recent years have impacted the Scottish party, it has also not had its own problems to seek. Indeed, Hamilton became deputy leader last autumn because internal rows over decision-making forced Douglas Ross to jump before he was pushed.

“I still rate Douglas Ross really highly. I think he is fantastic orator, he’s great in the chamber, he was great in First Minister’s Questions,” Hamilton says. “I suppose we did need a refresh, considering the decisions that Douglas made in terms of standing in the Westminster seat. I think Douglas was very gracious, and the whole process was as palatable as we could make it. I’m just glad that somebody like Russell [Findlay] was ready to step up to the plate. I think he’s good for the party.”

The pair are now in the process of refining their policy offer. She accepts that her party has not had to focus on that side of the argument for the last decade while the constitutional question subsumed Scottish politics, but says it is now setting out the “broad brush” areas it is focusing on – including reforms to education and the NHS.

With just over a year to go until the Scottish election, she says she’s “really, really happy with where we’re going” and Findlay is already “making his mark”. “He’s a man of the people. I would say that I’m a woman of the people. I think my constituents will get that.”