Analysis: Maggie's long shadow dogs Scots Tories

Published on Monday 4 October 2010 18:36

TO SAY the legacy of Baroness Thatcher still casts a long shadow over the Scottish Conservative Party would be a considerable understatement. There are, of course, arguments in her favour, but Labour and the SNP have spent decades caricaturing her legacy and successfully depicting her as a destructive force while shamelessly propagating many of her central reforms.

The party in Scotland accepted long ago that Margaret Thatcher was a "problem" for its chances of revival north of the Border and acted accordingly. As leader, Iain Duncan Smith apologised for the poll tax, as did David Cameron after him.

The objective was clear - to convince Scots that a Cameron-led Conservative Party would not be a Thatcherite throwback. The trouble was getting everyone to sing from the same hymn sheet. The Tartan Tory Old Guard, personified by former Scottish secretary Michael Forsyth, was never going to be comfortable with this rewriting of history. Indeed, Lord Sanderson recently said Thatcher's premiership was "not particularly bad" for Scotland.

Cue opprobrium from political opponents - as there will be following this latest slip-up by a Tory candidate, coinciding destructively with the Birmingham conference. Ivor Tiefenbrun was of course stating - rather bluntly - his own personal view, but it will inevitably be conflated with that of the Scottish Conservative Party as a whole.

Such is the fate of a party still trying to cast off a controversial past. As Scotland Office minister David Mundell recently observed, many Scots still have an "irrational fear" of what a Tory-led government might do. Maybe so, but criticising the electorate is never a good idea.

• David Torrance is the author of We in Scotland - Thatcherism in a Cold Climate