Allan Massie: Forget rebranding, Scots Tories need hard work

Published on Wednesday 12 October 2011 00:06

It HAS been a strange few weeks for the Scottish Tories. They have been attracting an unaccustomed lot of attention. In contrast, Scottish Labour’s leadership contest, admittedly scarcely under way yet, has been more or less ignored.

Indeed, interest has been so low that Ed Miliband couldn’t recall the name of one of the three candidates – if indeed he ever knew it (the candidate was Ken Mackintosh, MSP for Eastwood, though I don’t suppose Mr Miliband could place Eastwood on the map either).

The Tories, however, have been getting lots of airtime and column inches. They have Murdo Fraser to thank for the upsurge of attention. This is not surprising. He seeks to win the leadership election in order to dissolve the party he has been elected to lead. Now the ballot papers have gone out and it won’t be long before we know if members agree to proceed quietly to the knacker’s yard.

Mr Fraser’s argument is that the party is already on a life-support machine. So why not switch the power off and start again? Scottish Tories no more! Let’s be someone else! This is the sort of solution favoured by PR firms commissioned to suggest ways of reviving a failing brand.

Many, it should be said, agree with Mr Fraser’s desire to be out with the old and in with the new. One may add that he has shown himself to be an honest man, declaring his intention even as he announced his candidacy. A craftier politician would have acted otherwise; winning the leadership election, for which he was originally, as deputy leader at Holyrood, the clear favourite, before proceeding to dissolve the party and start afresh.

As it is, he has handicapped himself. The election is being held on the AV (alternative vote) system. This probably means that Mr Fraser will have to win an outright majority of first preference votes, since it is difficult to see why any who vote for a candidate who doesn’t want to dissolve the party should give him their second preference vote.

Everyone, of course, agrees that the position of the party is wretched. Support has been ebbing for years. Old voters die off or go gaga, and too few young ones are attracted to replace them. The Scottish Tories resemble Senior Service cigarettes, a brand that was once a market leader, but is now hard to find, selling just enough to persuade the manufacturers to keep it going. Over much of the country, Tory constituency associations scarcely exist.

None of the four candidates – the others being Ruth Davidson, Jackson Carlaw and Margaret Mitchell – has ever won a parliamentary election. All are in Holyrood thanks only to the List. But then there are only three Tories there who actually won a seat in their own right in May – and none of the three, John Lamont, John Scott or Alex Fergusson, has chosen to stand for leader. So the election is being fought by losers, which, opponents may say, is absolutely as it should be.

Little has been said about policy, except with regard to the candidates’ stance on the constitution and the extension of devolution. This is quite reasonable. No policy advocated by any of the candidates would have the slightest chance of being implemented. So why bother? Given that the SNP enjoys a majority at Holyrood, whoever is elected as Tory leader can’t even hope to match the modest degree of influence Annabel Goldie exerted in the last parliament. So policy statements and promises would only be so much hot air.

The general view is that Margaret Mitchell has no chance – though she may win some votes from diehards who would like to see the Scotland Act repealed and the Scottish Parliament wound up. So a vote for Ms Mitchell would be like an expression of Jacobitism after Culloden, pure sentimentality.

That leaves Jackson Carlaw and Ruth Davidson. Mr Carlaw, despite being an effective debater, failed to persuade a majority of the voters in what used to be the safest Tory seat in Scotland to elect him. Instead, they gave their support to the man whose name escaped Mr Miliband. This doesn’t say much for Mr Carlaw’s star quality. On the other hand, he is a businessman who, some may hope, would regain some of the small-business vote which has defected from the Tories to the SNP. Or again, he might not.

Ms Davidson has been promoted as being different – young, female, etc – a long way from the blue-rinse Tory ladies. Some of the old girls were charming, but no doubt it’s time for a change. However, this is not the important thing. It is not why she would get my vote – if I was a member of the Tory party. It is rather that she seems to understand what is needed if the party is ever to revive. This is not a change of name. It is not even setting out to be more assertively Scottish. The time for the party to take that line was 20 years ago.

If the Scottish Tory party is to have a future it requires to rebuild its organisation at constituency level. It must start winning more council seats before it can realistically hope to win parliamentary ones. It has to have active agents in every constituency – agents who learn about the electorate and know where potential votes are to be found. It has to campaign vigorously on issues of local importance.

In other words, it has to start behaving like the SNP in the Nineties and the Liberals in the Eighties. These are the two parties that took previously secure Tory seats, and this is how they set about doing so.

Ms Davidson believes that what the Scottish Tories require is not a cosmetic facelift and rebranding, but hard work at constituency and local government level. This is why she deserves to win.

If she does, her effort to revive the party from the ground up may still fail. But it’s the only hope for the Tories. For too long they believed themselves entitled to the support of voters – just as Scottish Labour still believes itself entitled to such support.

Ms Davidson evidently realises that support once lost is hard to regain, and must be earned by hard work. So what remains of the Tory faithful should give her a chance.

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The West Awake

Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 05:31 PM

When the life support is finally pulled from these greedy, elitist, unionist anachronisms I won't miss them, and neither will many Scots. In fact I'll do a Scottish jig on their grave. I won't forget what they did to my country in the 80s and no "apology" from toff-boy Cameron or any other Tory will ever make it right. They were nasty, anti-Scottish Tories then, and whatever they choose to call themselves in the future, they'll still be nasty anti-Scottish Tories.

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Neil Waugh

Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 03:47 PM

C'mon the SNC!!

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Red Etin

Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 02:52 PM

"it is difficult to see why any who vote for a candidate who doesn’t want to dissolve the party should give him their second preference vote" ...BECAUSE, if a "status quo" candidate doesn't win outright, then the party will be difficult to hold together. So, second prefence to Murdo does make a lot of sense as he provides the only alternative to "status quo".

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New Unionism

Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 11:31 AM

Nice to see 80% of City big firms avoiding paying tax - and folk wonder why Westminster is in a mess.

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New Unionism

Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 11:30 AM

Murdo is right as are many Labour voters, it's about redefining unionism to recognise that Scotland deserves to run its own affairs, start its own oil fund aka Norway (now £300 billion after 15 years) to guarantee future generations prosperity, but still retain links with the UK in areas of shared interest = FFA = new unionism.

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McNasty

Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 08:11 AM

With an average membership age of 80 the demise of "Scottish Tories" cannot be far off.

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