David Wallace Lockhart
Political correspondent

This contest has been fairly brutal, with a lot of infighting.

A big challenge for the new leader will be to bring the party back together.

One insider, awaiting the result in the room, tells me “we either hang separately, or hang together”.

David Wallace Lockhart
Political correspondent

Scottish Conservative figures are filtering into a conference room in central Edinburgh to find out who their new leader will be.

No sign of any of the three candidates yet, though their seats are reserved at the front.

Assembled journalists are having to keep themselves occupied with the pastries the venue has laid out, for the time being.

Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland

Whoever comes out on top of the leadership contest faces a mammoth task of restoring the Scottish Conservatives' reputation heading in to the 2026 Holyrood election, according to the party’s former communications chief.

Earlier Andy Maciver told the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland programme that the first job for the new leader will be to manage expectations in the 18-month run up to voters heading to the polls.

He said: “I don’t think the party can look at any of the candidates and say they are the person who is going to keep 31 seats.

“The great likelihood in 2026, with independence now off the table, is this is between the SNP and Labour. The Tories are not at the races as we saw in July.

“So whoever takes over, there is going to be a big deficit in the seats that they win. They have 31 at the moment, they are going to get nothing like that and they’re going to lose significant amounts of the vote share.

“That will happen to any of these three candidates. It won’t make a difference which one.”

Image source, PA Media

While the Scottish Tories did not have as bad an election night as many in the party had feared, losing just one MP, they won just 12% of the vote share.

They also lost deposits in 16 seats where they gained less than 5% of ballots - compared to none in 2019.

The election also proved the undoing of Douglas Ross, who said he would remain in place until a new leader was chosen - before returning to the backbenches.

The Highlands and Islands MSP faced an internal revolt over a last-minute decision to run for Westminster again, in place of a colleague who had been ill in hospital.

Candidates to replace him needed 100 nominations from party members to get on the ballot paper, with the contest conducted using a preferential voting system.

The bottom ranked candidate is eliminated in each round, with their first-preference votes redistributed until one candidate receives over 50% of votes cast.

Whoever wins the race will need to contend with a challenging political landscape for Conservatives in Scotland.

Read more here.

Image source, Getty Images

Veteran MSP Murdo Fraser has also thrown his hat into the ring - and it's not his first rodeo.

The Mid-Scotland and Fife MSP has been at Holyrood since 2001 and ran to lead his party in 2011, but lost out to Ruth Davidson.

He had a radical platform back then: arguing for the party to change its name and split from the UK Conservatives, but has backed away from that approach this time.

“I want this party to speak with a distinctive Scottish voice, but I won’t be splitting it or setting up a new one," Fraser said. "My aim is to unite the party, not divide it."

That has not prevented him from taking a swipe at the UK party, nor the current Scottish leader.

Fraser said the party had been "let down" by Douglas Ross, as well as by Boris Johnson over Partygate, Liz Truss over her disastrous mini-budget and Rishi Sunak at D-Day commemorations.

Borrowing a phrase from Johnson, the seasoned MSP vowed party members would “take back control” under his leadership.

Image source, Getty Images

Meghan Gallacher, another who was widely tipped to run, was the next candidate to declare.

She was deputy leader of the party but resigned over "concerning allegations" about leader Douglas Ross.

Gallacher said she believed there was a "potential risk to the reputation of our party and the leadership contest".

Murdo Fraser, Jamie Greene, Liam Kerr and Brian Whittle also raised concerns over a Daily Telegraph report that Mr Ross said last July that he should be replaced by Russell Findlay.

Gallacher has enjoyed a rapid political rise after joining North Lanarkshire Council in 2017 aged 25.

She was elected an MSP for Central Scotland in 2021. The following year, she was named deputy to Douglas Ross and was front and centre of the party’s opposition to controversial proposals to make it easier for Scots to change their legal gender.

The politics graduate may be dusting off her dissertation, which examined the decline of the Conservative Party in Scotland.

She said the contest was an opportunity for a reset and that she wanted to build a "modern, centre-right party".

Image source, Getty Images

The first candidate to launch their campaign was the party's justice spokesperson, Russell Findlay.

A former investigative journalist, he was the party's director of communications before becoming an MSP for the West of Scotland in 2021.

Findlay has written books on gangland crime and was the victim of an acid attack in 2015, when an assailant appeared at his door disguised as a postman.

After announcing his candidacy, he said he had been warned by Police Scotland of a threat to his life from a "known criminal".

The frontbencher - who had been widely expected to run and was considered an early favourite - announced his candidacy before the format of the contest had even been announced.

He vowed to build a "positive, modern" Conservative movement in Scotland as he urged the party to "refocus our efforts from predominantly battling against independence".

Image source, PA

Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the Scottish Conservative leader's election.

After some introductory remarks from the party's chairman Craig Hoy the leader will be announced.

We'll then get the chance to hear from the successful candidate.

Murdo Fraser, Meghan Gallacher and Russell Findlay remain in the running.

You can watch all the proceedings here on this live page - just press the play icon at the top of the page.

We'll bring you analysis and reports throughout the morning.