Alex Cole-Hamilton stands for First Minister

Speaking in the Scottish Parliament as he stood for the office of First Minister, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP said:

“I offer my candidacy for the office of First Minister of Scotland. I do so because while the governing party may have elected to forego any democratic process to test the ideas or motivations of their candidate, I don’t think that Parliament should.

“I do so more in hope than in expectation, but that hope among Liberal Democrats is growing. A hope self-evident in last week’s English local election results which saw us overhaul the Conservative Party for the first time in a generation; in Scottish opinion polls which consistently show us growing significantly in this place, set to return many more MSPs; and in council election results the length and bread of Scotland.

“This Liberal Revival is well and truly under way.

“Presiding Officer, as the outgoing First Minister has just said, this week we commemorate a quarter century of our reconvened Scottish Parliament. In the weeks following his installation as Deputy First Minister in 1999, my predecessor, the then Leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, Jim Wallace said:

"Government involves hard choices, and broad responsibilities, and there are inevitably times when the comfort zone of easy opposition beckons.

“Presiding Officer, I have spent enough time in opposition, watching government ministers make poor decisions that make the lives of our constituents poorer still, and so I stand today.

“Those were simpler times. You could see your GP at the first time of asking and your dentist still offered NHS care. Scottish education was amongst the best in the world and all the ferries worked.

“It was so much easier to rent somewhere to live or to buy your first home. Our economy was growing and business thrived.

“But for nearly twenty years, the SNP have been ignoring the people who do most of the heavy lifting in our society. You’re working harder but it feels like you’re falling further behind - like you’re being taken for granted.

“Presiding Officer, we need ministers that won’t make empty promises but will get the basics right. We need new hope in our politics.

“And hope is at the heart of everything the Scottish Liberal Democrats stand for.

“We want to create world-class mental health services by taxing the social media giants who cause so much of the problem. That’ll help get you faster access to your GP, and we’ll make sure you can see an NHS dentist too.

“We will lift up Scottish education again by tackling the violence in our schools, with more teachers and more in-class support.

“We’ll reduce your bills and tackle climate change by rolling out a national insulation programme, and we’ll get the government-owned water company to clean up its act and stop filling our rivers and our beaches with sewage.

“We want to offer a fair deal for communities as well by actually giving power away from politicians back to local people.

“To answer the housing emergency by building more homes, encouraging confidence in investors and answering the needs of tenants and homeowners alike.

“To connect our communities with trains, buses and ferries that you can depend on.

“Presiding Officer, when this Parliament reconvened, some of the challenges we now face must have seemed then almost inconceivable.

“The climate emergency, war in continental Europe, long Covid, cyberattacks on our health service and the insidious reach of abused technology.

“Those challenges now require a response rooted not in the divisions of the past 17 years but rather in cooperation here and beyond our borders. It’s why Liberal Democrats want to put Scotland at the heart of a reformed Britain and to fix our broken relationship with Europe.

“Presiding Officer, the outcome of this election is already decided, I understand that, but if our relatively new democracy is about anything it is about the exchange of ideas and of competing visions of what our country can become.

“So, I humbly submit my candidacy today and, with it, a liberal vision for the future of Scotland.”