Brian Monteith: Smile though your party’s breaking

Will Ruth Davidson’s election as leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party reverse the seemingly inevitable decline of the once all-conquering party?

Friday’s result closed the door on there being a new centre-right party in Scotland. It is not going to happen this side of any referendum on independence – and that event must now become the central focus for right-leaning unionists be they inside or outside the Tory Party gazebo.

Davidson should be given time and support to show that youth and dynamism can change her party’s fortunes. The defeated candidates and their supporters should come to terms with the result and its ramifications. To show Davidson has magnanimity and can unify the party, Murdo Fraser, who came second in the leadership contest, should be asked to manage the Tory campaign to save the union. It should be sufficient to keep him and his supporters in the party working for Davidson rather than against her.

On a personal level, Davidson must be congratulated for she has come a long way in a few years. Only joining the party two years ago she was thrust into the limelight as the Tory candidate in the 2009 Glasgow North East by-election. She polled a poor 5.2 per cent, only 62 votes ahead of the BNP and then at last year’s general election slipped to fourth behind the Liberal democrat. It was a tough learning curve.

Between the two elections she had sought the nomination for Bromsgrove when Julie Kirkbride announced her resignation, but was passed over. Looking to the Holyrood elections Davidson secured the candidacy for Glasgow Kelvin, but was ranked second on the regional list by party members, a fate that guaranteed she would have to wait another four years.

Then came 2011 and what a year it has been. As the election kicked off the Conservative establishment removed Malcolm Macaskill from the head of the list in circumstances that still remain shrouded in mystery and speculation. Although the Tory vote in the Glasgow region fell to an all-time low of 6.1 per cent it was enough to return Davidson. When, in May, Annabel Goldie announced it was time to pass on her crochet needles many saw John Lamont as the preferred choice of the party establishment. Despite being heavily courted Lamont displayed a glass jaw and declined.

The establishment’s attention switched to Davidson – it was a long shot, but she has drive and a CV showing more life experience than the prime minister’s – and the cachet of being gay – a counter-intuitive idea to most people who see Conservatives as, well, conservative.

When the leadership election was launched it was taken by the scruff of the neck by Fraser’s frank analysis that the Scottish Tory Party was not fit for purpose and that he would create a new party that could give the wider right-of-centre constituency a fresh start.

Davidson was by now being implored by the vested interests within the old establishment to stand and save the likes of David Mundell, Lords Strathclyde and Forsyth and the 13th Marquess of Lothian, Michael Ancram to his friends, from being marginalised within the Scottish party. She accepted the offer, but thanks to Fraser’s boldness was no longer seen as the moderniser but as the arch-traditionalist.

On Friday, after a long and often terse campaign, it was announced she had triumphed with the support of less than half of the members. It is a precarious mandate, for 36 per cent of the membership never voted – greater than the 33 per cent that backed her.

To date all that we know about Davidson has been the repetition of platitudes based upon her youth and commitment to radical change. Her age is beyond dispute, but so is her inexperience. The radical change appears to be using social media and introducing Lord Sanderson’s reforms brought about by membership numbers more than halving every decade. By 2020 all Tories will fit into Edinburgh’s Playhouse Theatre; by 2030 they will number fewer than the crowd watching Hamilton Accies on Saturday.

To deliver a revived dynamic party Davidson must drive membership numbers up and get a larger share of them to come out and help. In a year’s time it will be a fair question to ask if she has achieved this.

Then there is the identity issue. Born in 1978, it was not Davidson that delivered the Poll Tax or introduced the cold economic reality that closed most of Scotland’s mines or steel mills – her first vote in a general election vote was not until 1997 when the Tories were wiped out in Scotland.

To establish a Scottish, as well as a British identity, Davidson has to show she runs the party, not Cameron, and that she puts Scotland’s interests in Britain first. We have heard nothing of how she will achieve this – only Fraser had offered a solution.

She also has to bolster the finances. Sir Jack Harvie said he would not help fundraise for a new party – but many Tory financiers backed Fraser and will not now be taking tables at his dinners. Only London Central Office can bale her out and who pays the piper…

The irony of Friday’s result is that Davidson would stand a far better chance of dealing with all her problems if she had the new party that Fraser was proposing.

Easier to find members, activists and candidates for a new party? Tick. Easier to raise funds for a new party? Tick. Easier to develop home-grown policies for a new party? Tick. Easier to allow old faces to accept the mistakes of the past and be reborn through a baggage-free new party? Tick.

Last Thursday there was a council by-election in the Highlands after a Labour councillor was jailed for fiddling his expenses. The Tory candidate, a keen respected local lad, shouted loudly and worked like a Trojan putting out more leaflets than his opponents. He came fourth.

Next May the Conservative councillors face the same prospect and it will be the first real challenge by which Davidson’s youthful, dynamic shout louder and work harder solution will be tested. Forget how she performs at First Minister’s Questions, it is the messages that she crafts that will determine her party’s fate at the ballot box.

Being proud of her party, as Davidson repeatedly tells us she is, will count for naught. As a currency pride in being Conservative and Unionist has been so debased it is practically worthless.

I wish Ruth Davidson well, I really do, it was my party for some 30 years, but I cannot help but think she should have backed Murdo – for without his big idea she does not have the right toolkit to triumph.

• Brian Monteith is policy director of ThinkScotland.org and a former Tory MSP