David Cameron scared off Scottish voters, say senior Conservatives

Published on Saturday 8 May 2010 20:10

THE recriminations within the Conservative Party over its election failure in Scotland began yesterday when senior Tories complained that David Cameron's role in the campaign was too prominent.

Leading figures have privately questioned the Tories' tactics, saying he should not have been put at the heart of the campaign when political intelligence suggested he was unpopular north of the Border.

The recriminations following the party's failure to increase its tally of a single seat began in earnest, with senior Tories complaining that Cameron's face on campaigning literature had not helped their cause.

The inquest will continue on Tuesday, when MSPs hold their regular group meeting.

"There is deep unhappiness about how the campaign was conducted in Scotland," said one senior Tory source, who suggested that resources had been poured into the wrong seats, citing East Renfrewshire, the Conservative target constituency that was visited by Cameron.

Despite Cameron's visit, the seat was convincingly held by Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy.

Some Tories believe cash and resources were taken away from West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine towards the end of the campaign when on election night the party halved the Lib Dem majority.

Similarly, East Renfrewshire was identified as a likely win and Cameronwas told it was "in the bag" . In the event, Murphy doubled his majority in what was once the safest Tory seat in Scotland.

"David Cameron just does not have the appeal he does in England and Wales. There were ways to get around that, for example by using Annabel Goldie, who is consistently shown to be popular with the electorate," the source said.

Alex Johnstone, the Tory MSP and general election candidate, agreed that changes had to be made.

"The Conservative Party needs to do a post-election review immediately and look at how the vote varied in Scotland," Johnstone said. "We do have these figures on the table and should do this quickly, because there is likely to be another election in five months' time, not five years."

Meanwhile, a root and branch review of the Scottish party's structure, relationship with the UK party, policy and presentation is inevitable, according to another senior source.

"We have to apply our own slogan to our own affairs. We can't go on like this," he said. "We can't go on not winning, not having any Scottish seats. We have to have a fundamental look at how things are."

The source compared the lack of London input in Scotland with the effort put into Wales, where the Welsh Tories managed to increase their number of seats from three to eight.

"If we'd had the same input into Perth and North Perthshire as we did in Carlisle or in the Welsh constituencies, then we could have won it. I think it's inevitably a structural review, a positioning review, a policy review, everything has to be looked at."