Leader: Scots Tories kick ideas of radical change into touch

TO THE victor, the spoils. Or so it has traditionally been in politics. The question for Ruth Davidson, who has won the leadership of the Scottish Conservative Party at the age of 32 and after just months as an MSP, is: what do those spoils amount to? What future is there for her and her party in a Scotland dominated by a left-of-centre consensus?

Hard electoral facts show Ms Davidson has a massive task ahead of her. Wiped out in the 1997 UK general election, the Tories have continued to struggle ever since, winning just 15 Holyrood seats earlier this year. The party may not be dead, but it is on life support. Ms Davidson has the task of applying resuscitation. She has many qualities in her favour. She is very young for a political leader, smart, good on television (as you would expect from a former TV journalist), and bursting with energy. She also happens to be a lesbian, which matters not in terms of her politics but suggests Scottish Tories are more broad-minded than opponents would have us believe.

Yet despite these qualities, there is a suspicion Ms Davidson won not because of what she stood for, which was rather vague, but because of what she was against: namely Murdo Fraser’s plan for a new right-of-centre Scottish party. Her main rival put forward the bold idea of getting rid of the Conservative name to form a new organisation with close ties to, but not part of, the UK Tories. Although he garnered a considerable amount of support, Mr Fraser yesterday fell short, leaving his radical plans in tatters.

Mr Fraser may yet regret his honesty in being so up-front about his plan, but it did have the benefit of being thoughtful, though perhaps was the last throw of the dice for a party which once dominated Scotland. A new, renamed, distinctly Scottish, right-of-centre, party with the same relationship to the UK Tories that the Bavarian CSU has with the German CDU would, Mr Fraser hoped, no longer be a “toxic” brand and would have far more policy discretion to take the fight to the SNP. Such a new party would have stood a chance of attracting those right-of-centre voters who currently back the Nationalists. It is hard to see how the same old Tories will do so.

However, in rejecting Mr Fraser, the party in Scotland has shown itself to be conservative with a small “c” as well as a big “C”, opting, unless there is something Ms Davidson has not told us, for more of the same. In a reference to her fondness for kickboxing, Ms Davidson last night declared Scottish Conservatism “alive and kicking”. Good knockabout, yes, but now she is leader she will have to do more than spout soundbites. Coming to the job with virtually no parliamentary experience, and the backing of just two MSP colleagues, Ms Davidson will have to move quickly to show how she can revive the Conservative and Unionist Party, as she pointedly referred to it. It is alive, yes. Kicking? Hardly.