Conservatives must not try to ‘out-Reform Reform’ says senior MP Andrew Bowie

The Conservatives must not try to “out-Reform Reform”, a senior Scottish MP has said.

Speaking exclusively to Holyrood last month, Andrew Bowie, the shadow Scottish secretary, said his party needed to “stick true to who we are as Conservatives” in order to rebuild trust with the UK public after its bruising electoral defeat last year.

And he argued that “aping Nigel Farage at every available opportunity” was not how it would re-establish a broad enough voter base to return to government in the future.

Last week, one-time Scottish Conservative leadership hopeful Jamie Greene quit the party, claiming it was pursuing a “Reform-lite agenda”.

The MSP, who now sits as an Independent, said the party was at risk of becoming “Trump-esque in both style and substance”.

Bowie, who retained his West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine seat last summer despite dropping over 5,000 votes, acknowledged there had been a “realignment” in politics.

He said rising support for Reform was due to “disenchantment with politics as a whole, especially the established political parties in this country”.

Asked how his party should respond to a challenge from the right, Bowie said: “By being authentic and true to ourselves, by not trying to out-Reform Reform, by not trying to appeal to the common denominator in terms of chasing the voter.

“We need to stick true to who we are as Conservatives, offer a pragmatic, sensible, liberal, Conservative vision of what the future can be in Scotland, and indeed the UK.

“You need a broad coalition of support from across the country, from across age groups, demographics, and that is what we have to be focused on doing. And we’re not going to achieve that, we’re not going to get that broad voter base, if we are purely focused on countering, responding to and aping Nigel Farage at every available opportunity, because nobody can out-Farage Farage, so why bother?”

But when asked whether his party has mimicking Reform policies – for example in ditching its commitment to net zero by 2050 – Bowie said it was “not true” and asked voters to “look deeper”.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch delivered a speech last month in which she said the net zero target, which had been set by Theresa May in 2019, was “impossible… without a serious drop in our living standards or by bankrupting us”.

Bowie, who is also currently acting energy secretary while Claire Coutinho is on maternity leave, said while aiming for net zero was the “eminently sensible thing to do”, there had not been enough discussion about what reaching the 2050 target would mean.

And he warned pursuing it now would be “really damaging” for the UK.

“Yes, of course we need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. Yes, of course that means investing in new technologies. But we need to do so in a way that’s sensible, pragmatic and actually delivers jobs and opportunities for the British people,” he added.