You don't hear much from up here, so allow me to put a Scottish perspective on the record. I'm the Great British PAC County Director for the Scottish Borders, and when I first encountered the PAC, the connection was instant. It struck me as the professional, strategic, properly organised version of the very thing I'd been quietly arguing for over a number of years.
My conviction has always been the same: the right, and above all the pro-UK, Unionist parts of our society, need to stop competing with one another and start collaborating. Sit the different strands of the conservative and Unionist movement down at the same table, let each bring its own concerns forward, and weld them into a single united front. That vision is now nearer to reality than it has ever been.
A strategy for the silenced
The concept is simple. Gather a cross-section of conservative, patriotic and pro-UK voices, and build a shared policy platform: a document written by many hands that speaks on behalf of tens of thousands of people. Every contributor tables the issues that matter most to them, and those issues are then refined, broadened and formalised together into a collective political strategy.
Once agreement is reached, the result becomes the Right/Pro-UK Unionist Political Strategy. It is taken back to the groups who helped shape it, and provided a majority backs it, it becomes the roadmap for action.
This is not a document destined to gather dust in a drawer. The days of pro-UK voters being taken for granted, their loyalty banked at every election and then ignored for another four or five years, would be over. The strategy would be formally laid before the UK Government at Queen Elizabeth House in Edinburgh. We would not merely request support, we would expect it, in public. From there it would be put to Scottish Labour and the Scottish Conservatives with a plain message: back this, or face the consequences.
We refuse to be sidelined any longer. We will not stand by while our British identity is erased from Scottish political life. Absent meaningful support, we will begin standing our own candidates, and we will mean it.
The PAC vision
By now the reader should see the point: while it is in no way identical, the Great British PAC does precisely what I had been advocating in Scotland, only with greater professionalism and common sense. Through the Policy Platform, anyone can sign up and put a policy forward. No one is judged, no one is hounded, and help is on hand for those who need it to get a policy submitted.
And yes, it could readily form the basis of a party manifesto: a bottom-up, people-powered programme built by real voters rather than spin doctors.
This is genuine democracy, not the filtered, stage-managed version that Holyrood peddles.
A dangerous game of labels
Regrettably, in today's Scotland a vision like this is branded dangerous. Literally. Right across the United Kingdom, those of us on the right are ever more readily tarred as “far right.” In Scotland the language has grown especially poisonous. The First Minister himself recently declared that the “far right” is a danger to democracy in Scotland.
Remember, this is the very same First Minister who, in his first speech as SNP leader, pledged to “remove the toxicity” from Scottish politics. As with so much else under the SNP, that promise has crumbled. Rather than dampening the flames, he has poured petrol on them.
Branding a sizeable chunk of Scotland's electorate “far right” and “a danger to democracy” does not lower the temperature. It raises it. It radicalises. It divides. We have heard these arguments before, that words can radicalise, that political rhetoric can inflame fragile minds. The First Minister, of all people, should know better. He is doing the very thing his own party once warned against.
Hatred left unchallenged
Let's be honest: the SNP feeds on division. A party built around a single ideological cause, in this case independence, can only sustain itself by stoking polarisation. Anglophobia. Us versus them. We have all seen the inflammatory banners: “F*** the Tories.” “Tories Out of Scotland.” “England Out of Scotland.”
These were not merely fringe protesters. Elected Ministers marched alongside those slogans. Not once did the SNP leadership disown the hatred. Not once did they say, “This goes too far.” And as we have seen, words carry consequences.
The offices of Conservative MSPs and councillors were attacked. Vandalism. Threats. Political violence. The ground was prepared by years of blaming the UK Government for every grievance, however trivial or however plainly devolved.
Now, with Reform UK climbing in the polls, the First Minister is rattled. He should be. The SNP's era of comfortable dominance may at last be drawing to a close. And let there be no doubt: nothing would do more for Scotland's future than bidding farewell to the most extreme and divisive party in British politics. The SNP has governed by blaming, isolating and inflaming, but that tide is turning.
A warning and a way forward
Sadly, the First Minister's recent rhetoric paints a target on the back of every right-leaning voter in Scotland. He may never say it aloud, but the message could not be clearer: your views are not welcome here. That is dangerous.
It is dangerous for civil society. It is dangerous for democracy. And it is dangerous for those of us who want nothing more than a united Britain governed by reason and principle rather than rage.
I pray we never witness a repeat of the violence already inflicted on Scottish Conservatives. But should we, the First Minister cannot claim he was never warned. His words are not without consequence.
In the meantime, the rest of us will carry on building. Quietly. Strategically. Democratically. Because this country is worth saving. And we will not be cast aside.
Peter Morris, County Director, Scottish Borders. Join us at the Great British PAC.