THE contest for leadership of the Scottish Tory Scottish parliamentary candidates burst into life yesterday as the Left's champion Struan Stevenson pulled out of the race for Holyrood altogether and threw his weight behind David McLetchie.

Meanwhile, the campaign of former Ayr MP Phil Gallie was up and running, with his supporters claiming there is strong support for a contested leadership election and that they have already secured more than enough nominations to make it a real contest.

Speaking to The Herald from Tenerife where he is currently on holiday, Mr Gallie said that the Scottish Tories needed to be more aggressive. The time for apologising was over and the party must get up off its knees. He was looking forward to ''verbally roughing up'' their political opponents.

Mr Gallie said that he would be resigning from his job with Scottish Enterprise when he returned from holiday next week. He said it was only fair to the company to quit now that he had announced his intention of running for the leadership. He said this would also free him to concentrate on winning the Ayr seat at Holyrood.

As widely forecast, Mr Stevenson, who is a former Westminster candidate, said that he had decided to seek election to the European Parliament rather than Holyrood. He said it was of vital importance that Scotland's interests were well represented in Brussels and that communications between Holyrood and the EU were maintained at the highest possible level.

Mr McLetchie, who is an Edinburgh lawyer and like Mr Gallie is identified as being on the Right of the party, said he was delighted to have Mr Stevenson's backing, but this was tinged with regret that he would not be standing for Holyrood.

Mr McLetchie, the candidate for Edinburgh Pentlands, rejected the idea of an East/West split in the leadership contest, stressing he had the support, not only of Struan Stevenson, who is former leader of Kyle and Carrick Council, but also Glasgow lawyer Annabel Goldie and Glasgow City councillor John Young. He already had around 25 nominations from approved parliamentary candidates.