Duncan Hamilton: Fraser unveils a party with no name – and no idea

THERE has been no shortage of people lining up to criticise Murdo Fraser, the Tory leadership contender, and I’ll be joining them in a few paragraphs. But first, credit where it is due. In launching his campaign, Fraser has managed to get the Scottish Tories back into the news. He has made them seem radical, open to change and potentially relevant. For all the efforts of David McLetchie and Annabel Goldie – both people for whom I have a lot of time and respect – I don’t think I remember a single occasion when either managed to take a primetime slot on the UK national news. Murdo Fraser managed that, and he isn’t even the leader yet.

So what’s the big idea? Well, it’s really more of a bold and brutal appraisal of political reality than a big idea. If leadership elections are meant to be about making the party activists feel warm and fuzzy, Fraser has skipped that chapter and decided to headline with the ‘Vote for me, I promise to abolish you’ school of electioneering. He pledges an end to the Tory Party in Scotland and the rebirth of a brand new centre-right party. The terms of his speech announcing his candidacy were jaw dropping. It was “time to face the brutal truth ... that the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party is failing”. It will, according to the favourite to succeed Annabel Goldie, “never succeed in its current form”.

Never mind taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut – the bold Fraser went at it with a chainsaw, hand grenade and napalm back-up. And to be fair to him, on that he is entirely correct. Only the most deluded party hack could imagine that ‘one more heave’ is a legitimate and intelligent response to the desperate plight of the Tory Party in Scotland.

But that’s why the rest of the Murdo Fraser pitch was so disappointing. Having got our attention and invited us to consider the possibility of a new force in Scottish politics, he couldn’t bring himself to follow the logic of his own argument.

When pressed about the new party, Fraser predicted that if he won the party would move to the new organisation “en masse”. Which, given his own analysis, is precisely what he needs to avoid. The sole advantage in ditching the Tory brand is to ditch the negative, unelectable aspects of the party. Only by doing so could he ever hope to attract new and fresh people and ideas. His understandable desperation to avoid this proposal simply being seen as a PR stunt is blown out of the water if there is no perception of fundamental change. Similarly, he concedes that although a different party, this new entity will take the whip of David Cameron’s Westminster Tories. Does that sound radical to you?

In truth, the only way a party of the centre-right is going to gain ground is by being genuinely radical on the constitution. That means understanding where Scotland has reached in its constitutional journey and dealing with the options ahead of us in a mature and considered way. Instead, there was a slightly alarming pledge that “We can kill independence. And break the SNP.” What does the bitterness and aggression of those statements say to those who might be tempted by this new party but who despair of the idiotic and apocalyptic ranting of Unionist parties? Until people like Murdo Fraser engage in this debate as serious and reflective people, aspiring to national leadership is pointless.

But fresh from killing independence and breaking the SNP, Fraser expressed his fervent desire for further constitutional change. Not ‘full fiscal freedom’ – which is apparently also the work of the devil – but ‘greater devolution’. Immediately concerned with scaring the six people still watching who had a clue what he was on about, Fraser continued thus: “I realise some people will say this is not Unionism. But that’s like saying that Australia or Germany or Switzerland or the United States or Canada are not Unions.”

Now I might be losing it all together, but isn’t each and every one of those a federal state? Are we therefore to take Fraser’s position as actually being that of the Lib Dems – in other words that he wants a federal UK? If that isn’t what he means, why quote exclusively federal countries in a leadership speech? And if it is what he thinks, why not just spit it out? It’s an honourable position for him to hold, and given that the Lib Dems have apparently abandoned it altogether there might even have been some tactical sense in adopting it. Instead we have totally confused thinking.

This was the moment to read the polls and sense the mood. It was the moment to try to define indy lite or devo max for the Tories as an alternative to independence and to tap into the majority support for full fiscal freedom.

This was the moment to get ahead of the curve on the constitution. Instead, the commendable candour and honesty of his assessment of Tory decline was ultimately lost in the garbled mess of his proposed remedy.

What started as a bold and brave intervention ended as a confused and contradictory muddle. We now know Murdo Fraser believes the Tories are toxic. We also know he hates the SNP. But leadership is about more. He has proposed a party with no name, made up of people who represent no change and has adopted a policy on the constitution which makes no sense. And the terrifying bit? He’s still the best candidate.