James Mitchell: Tory split may harm more than it helps

A centre right party could win votes in Scotland but it could also lead to lost seats if the Scottish Conservative Party still existed

OVER the last 17 months, one question has been repeatedly asked of Scottish Tories by counterparts in the rest of Britain: what explains the poor performance of the party in Scotland compared with that in Wales? During the long years in opposition, the Scottish party could at least take comfort in knowing that it was not alone in its unpopularity. But the party’s inherent weaknesses have once more been exposed with the return of the Conservatives to government in Westminster.

The Scottish party has not had to face up to its decline over the years. Mrs Thatcher claimed that Thatcherism had proved an economic success but a political failure in Scotland. While she set out to reverse Britain’s decline, her party north of the Border gave the impression of being content with the civilised management of its decline so long as others won elections on its behalf.

Michael Forsyth as Scottish Secretary tried to address the decline but this essentially metropolitan politician never seemed at ease in Scotland. When he finally realised that a distinct Scottish dimension needed to be addressed, his response was too little, too late and condescendingly symbolic: wearing a kilt to watch Braveheart and returning the Stone of Destiny.

The current leadership contest has seen the party’s first serious engagement with its decline. If it has been a bitter debate at times, this merely reflects the strong feelings and serious issues involved. Murdo Fraser has forced the issue on to the party’s agenda with his bold call for a new party. The other candidates have each responded to his proposal. If victory was assured for the candidate who has set the agenda then Mr Fraser would win by a landslide. But Mr Fraser has gambled heavily in this contest. It looks likely to be all or nothing for the party’s current deputy leader.

The problem each candidate faces is the classic two level game of leadership contests. The first game involves winning party support. The second is winning the support of the electorate. The challenge is finding a message that appeals across both games. A strong appeal to the party’s membership, the core of its core support, might not appeal to the wider electorate; a platform that might appeal to the wider electorate may not find support amongst its members. In the case of Mr Fraser, it is a three-level game. He must win the leadership contest, then win support for a new party before finally facing the electorate.

We know little about the Tories’ Scottish membership. We hear much about reactions to the candidates at hustings but the activists who turn up at hustings are not necessarily representative of the party as a whole. The wider membership of political parties tends to be more like the electorate than its activists. If the wider is either small “c” conservative – and this is the Conservative Party after all and the membership is largely of an age group that tends to distrust change – then Mr Fraser may come unstuck. But if the membership is anything like the wider electorate then he might win. But winning the leadership does not mean that Mr Fraser can automatically disband his party. He needs then to win two-thirds support at a special conference.

Former leader David McLetchie has given his support to Mr Fraser without endorsing the idea of a new party. This suggests that Mr Fraser’s strategy in this contest has been similar to Labour’s offer of a referendum on devolution and tax powers in 1997 and the SNP’s more recent proposals for a referendum on independence: “Vote for me without endorsing my central objective.” Mr Fraser might end up as leader but see his proposal for a new party rejected.

A second leadership contest would then seem inevitable given all the Mr Fraser has said throughout this contest. A face-saving compromise for the new leader is difficult, though not impossible, to imagine.

Assuming he becomes leader and then succeeds in getting the party to back his plans for a major rebranding exercise, Mr Fraser still faces some significant challenges. There is a fine balance to be struck between convincing his party that a new party is not a radical break with the past while convincing the electorate that a new party is indeed a break with the past. He may need to emphasise continuity in order to win party support but this will sit uneasily with the message that the proposed new party marks a break with the past when he faces the electorate. He will need a new message as well as a new party label for the latter.

Success in rebranding a political party requires more than old wine in new bottles. The rebranding of Labour as New Labour succeeded because of changes to Clause 4 signalled that the party was no longer committed to the “common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange”. The name change was not enough.

Over the years, some senior members of the SNP have occasionally considered changing the party’s name. Alex Salmond himself at one stage contemplated changing the name to the Scottish Independence Party and Douglas Crawford, former SNP MP, also suggested a name change. Instead, the SNP altered its image without a name change.

But even if a successfully rebranded party is launched, it would need to retain the core of the Conservatives’ existing support. But there may now be an even more worrying prospect for advocates of a new party.

While it was always likely that some members would seek to retain the Conservative Party label, reconstituting themselves as the real Conservatives, such a group would probably have withered away in time. The prospect of some senior Tories fighting under the old party banner would jeopardise the prospects of the new party.

Even without many big names as candidates, ownership of the Conservative name should be enough to attract enough support to undermine the new party without having much hope of success itself. There would probably be legal challenges to the use of the Conservative name. Ironically, these would be supported by the very party that had disowned the label. Prime Minister David Cameron and the party in England would inevitably be drawn into the affair.

If David Mundell stood against the official candidate of the new party in his Dumfries constituency he would almost certainly be handing the seat to Labour. Two of the three constituencies held in Holyrood by the Tories would be highly vulnerable if the Tory vote was split between two parties.

Splitting the Tory list votes would have similar effects. Even if the combined votes of the Conservative Party (Continuing), for lack of a better term, and the new party exceeded the Tories’ existing support, the combined forces of the centre right would almost certainly end up with fewer MSPs. Unless there is unity around whatever decision the party makes, a split could only do electoral harm, at least until the split is healed or one party is completely marginalised.

Some commentary has suggested that what is required is a Scottish version of the Bavarian Christian Social Union, distinct from the Christian Democratic Party elsewhere in Germany. In time, that might prove a reasonable parallel but the CSU came into being in very different context after the war and had its roots in a distinct established party system in Bavaria. A more useful comparison may be found nearer to home.

Scottish Tories might do well to remember Scottish Church history, with the splits, battles over legacy and resources and internecine disputes unfathomable to most observers. The Scottish Tories need to confront their decline but must avoid a Scottish Tory Disruption.

• Professor James Mitchell is head of the school of government and public policy at Strathclyde University