The Conservative Party’s Fife leader says that his party must find new voters if it is to continue its revival in the region.
Dave Dempsey, councillor for Inverkeithing and Dalgety Bay, took more than 10,000 votes in Thursday’s battle for the Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath Westminster seat, more than doubling his party’s tally from just two years ago.
Following strong returns in last month’s local council elections, Mr Dempsey said that his party was now a credible challenger in the Kingdom, following years on the political fringes.
“The Conservatives are clearly making progress in Scotland,” he said.
“The result did not come as a particular surprise.
“The surprise for me was that we were not closer to Labour and that Labour were not further away from the SNP.
“We are solidly third.
“We need now to reach out into the bits of Fife where traditionally we haven’t polled well before.”
While failing to return MP’s for any Fife Westminster seats, the Conservatives did enjoy huge swings in its favour in all four local constituencies.
Tony Miklinski, the party’s candidate in North East Fife, came within 3,655 votes of the SNP’s victorious Stephen Gethins and secured 24.1% of the vote.
In West Fife, a battleground for the SNP and Labour, Conservative candidate Belinda Hacking secured a 24.7% share of the vote – a swing of 12.8% on the result of 2015.
Having seen the party’s number of councillors soar from just three to 14 last month, Mr Dempsey said that it was now important that the party continued to find local candidates that could promote the Conservative brand in Fife.
“We’re now established,” he said.
“I got the train from North Queensferry to Markinch recently and it occurred to me that virtually every mile of that track now has a Conservative councillor.
““We’ve found local people and demonstrated that pound for pound Conservative councillors are as good or better than the alternatives.
“We have to demonstrate that voting Conservative in Fife can actually achieve something useful.
“It’s not a fringe activity for eccentrics as it almost once was.
“It takes time but we’ve come forward fairly dramatically in the last 12 months.”