Annabel Goldie flies in to fight 11 seats in one day – then home for dinner

THE Conservatives will today provide further evidence of their campaigning fire-power as Annabel Goldie takes to the air in a frenetic attempt to visit all their Scottish target seats in a day.

Ms Goldie will use a helicopter to travel from Hawick in the south, Edinburgh in the east, Argyll in the west and Aberdeenshire in the north in a move echoing David Cameron's announcement that he had booked several aircraft to hurtle him around the country.

Ms Goldie said she hoped she would be finished "by tea-time".

Party sources stressed last night that the helicopter had been donated as they sought to deflect Labour claims they were using their relative wealth to boss their way into power. It comes after the Tories revealed earlier this year that they had raised twice as much cash as Labour did in 2009.

But Ms Goldie's flight today will bring back memories of the no-expense spared campaigning methods employed by the SNP during the Holyrood campaign of 2007, when Alex Salmond booked chartered helicopter flights to shuttle across the country. Ms Goldie will be joined by shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague on a day of hectic campaigning.

The helicopter will set down no less than nine times between 9am and 4:30pm, travelling well over 300 miles. Starting in Hawick, it will then travel through the 11 seats that the party claims it can win at the election on 6 May: Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk; Edinburgh South; Edinburgh South-West; Angus; West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine; Perth and North Perthshire; Stirling; Argyll and Bute; East Renfrewshire; Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale, and finally, Dumfries.

The Conservatives' airborne style is in marked contrast to the more low-key Labour campaign which has already acknowledged it cannot hope to keep pace with their better-funded Tory rivals. The Scottish campaign yesterday sought to make a virtue of necessity, revealing how it planned to use party members to phone up one million voters.

Labour wants its own members to spend every evening ringing up ten local voters. Party campaign chiefs said it was an extremely cheap but trusted tactic.

Conservatives in Scotland are sensitive to claims they are outspending Labour, pointing out how they are self-funding.

One senior source said: "All the money we spend was raised in Scotland. We don't get money from down south."

But Labour was out to capitalise on Ms Goldie's flying trip, just as it did three years ago when Mr Salmond went airborne.

Margaret Curran, Labour's Glasgow East candidate, said: "Once again the Tories are looking down on Scotland. While the Tory chopper spends most of the day up in the air, Labour will have people out on the streets speaking to voters."

She added: "Their jet-setting ways, probably at Lord Ashcroft's expense, won't impress anyone and it just goes to show how out of touch they are with ordinary people. The Tories are a risk this country can't afford and Cameron's plans to slash spending now on public services will choke recovery."

The campaign arrives with Conservative UK coffers in rude health, with the party having raised 32m in 2009 alone. Major donations have included 500,000 each from Lord Sainsbury and Hedge fund grandee Stanley Fink. JCB boss Joseph Bamford has handed 400,000 to the Tories while former airline chief Michael Bishop gave 335,000.

The Scottish Conservatives have traditionally relied heavily on Lord Laidlaw for funding, but the Monaco-based peer has not given anything since 2007. Instead, their biggest fundraiser is Sir Jack Harvie, the construction tycoon and philanthropist, whose Glasgow-based fundraising "Focus in Scotland" dinners have raised well over 1m for the Scottish Tory cause.

The last such dinner in 2008, attended by Mr Cameron, raised well over 500,000, with tables being sold for more than 2,500 each.

With the Conservatives under fire from both the SNP and Labour over their plans to cut public spending this year, Ms Goldie claimed yesterday that Scottish voters backed their approach.

She said: "I don't think you get any cannier people than Scots. People do understand that the nation's credit card is maxed out and people understand that when that happens you have to rein in your spending and you have got to start looking at making sensible revisions."

She did not rule out supporting a pay freeze for most public sector workers for more than a year. The Tories have said that they will freeze pay for all workers earning more than 18,000.

Ms Goldie said: "I do think we need to have a public sector pay freeze for all those apart from the lowest paid."

Asked if it should be for more than one year, she replied: "Certainly for one year".

Of her itinerary today, she declared: "By tea-time tomorrow I will have been in all 11 seats."

Meanwhile, on a visit to the marginal Ochil and South Perthshire seat, Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray repeated a pledge already made by Prime Minister Gordon Brown to create 100,000 skilled jobs for Scotland in the next five years. He said: "The prospect of a Tory government at Westminster would cut off the economic recovery in its tracks and threaten Scottish jobs."

Scottish Labour's bid to call one million people is based on a "virtual phone bank system" is also being deployed by the SNP.

Campaign HQ issued local party members with the phone numbers and details of local voters it wants to target.

The method was used by the successful Obama campaign in the US presidential election, and is aimed at winning over sceptical voters using third-party pressure. Scottish campaign manager Frank Roy said: "We are going to back to what Labour does best – talking to people."

• HAVE you got a question for the Secretary of State for Scotland? Jim Murphy MP will be live on scotsman.com at 2.15pm today to answer your questions. Click here to email your questions for consideration.