Scottish Conservatives are to turn their success in securing Budget concessions from the SNP government into a campaign targeted at small businesses.
The party is buoyed by achieving more than £20m of additional spending for its priorities in negotiations leading to this week's Budget, while Labour and Liberal Democrats achieved nothing.
The party wants to counter attacks by those other opposition parties that Conservatives are propping up the SNP in a "Tartan Tory alliance".
Annabel Goldie, the party's Holyrood leader, took the message to the Gordon constituency yesterday with a speech intended also to reassure her party's grass roots, admitting some Tories think she has been "supping with the devil". She said: "My duty, the Scottish Conservative duty, is to put Conservative principles and policies into action". Listing concessions gained from Finance Secretary John Swinney, she added: "It's not perfect, but we have made a difference. We have made it better."
Miss Goldie went on to attack Labour as "not fit for purpose" and LibDems as "the invisible men and women of Scottish politics". She told party workers that if the SNP "wanders down the separatist road, we will oppose them tooth and nail".
The Budget concessions won by Tories include £10m over next financial year, and more in the following two years, to recruit 500 more police officers. The SNP's small business rates relief scheme is being accelerated under Conservative pressure, so that 120,000 small business premises will be removed from business rates from spring of 2009. The cost to the government of that is £12m for each of the next two years.
While Annabel Goldie pushes that message in interviews this weekend, Tory headquarters is urging constituency parties to leaflet with a message about Budget achievements. This will be followed up with a leaflet aimed at small businesses claiming the individual savings as a result of Tory pressure could mean up to £1000 next year.
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