Murdo makes his decisive move

With the public backing of four MSPs and MEP Struan Stevenson already in the bag, as deputy leader and the most experienced MSP seeking the leadership, Fraser could have played safe and offered a stay calm, steady-as-we-go message in the expectation that the normally dutiful party faithful would promote him.

Thankfully Murdo Fraser is not satisfied with the prospect of winning the leadership of the Scottish Conservatives; he has ambition; he wants to lead a party that can win elections and taste power in Scotland.

After some 30 years as a Conservative, from his days in shorts cheering on Maggie to the last six years as deputy to Annabel Goldie in the Scottish Parliament, Fraser has concluded that the Scottish Conservative Party will never again win enough support to do anything other than make up the numbers at Holyrood and Westminster.

If he and his colleagues are to have any influence on government policies, or indeed be part of a government, Fraser believes the Scottish centre-right has to rip it up and start again.

It will be said that his call for the creation of a new party, offering a phoenix-like rise out of the ashes of the old embers, is pandering to nationalism. Nothing could be further from the truth; for practically all of its history under various names, the Scottish Tories were independent in management, thought and action of the Westminster-based English party. Only in 1965 did the party merge with the English party and it is noticeable that success in Scotland has in relative terms remained elusive ever since.

By creating a new party with a new name and, by definition, the opportunity to create new policies that may at times conflict with those of David Cameron, a Scottish centre-right party can look to the Christian Social Union that has been in power in Bavaria since 1953.

Working together with the Christian Social Democrats, the CSU has often formed the federal government and there is no reason why a Scottish party could not evolve using the same model, forming British governments and holding cabinet positions that are relevant and in Scotland’s interests.

In the past, Conservative supporters of devolution argued that a Scottish parliament would bring about a party revival but the reverse has happened. When the Scottish Conservatives lost all of their MPs in the humiliating wipe-out of 1997 they still polled 493,059 votes, achieving a 17.53 percent share of the turnout.

By 2010, even though the Conservatives were coming back to power, the Scottish Tory vote had fallen to 412,855 and 16.7 per cent. A year later in the Holyrood elections it was an embarrassing 276,652 and 13.9 per cent. What Scottish Conservatives have experienced is a managed decline that rather shadows the death of their older members and supporters, whereas in England the brand has been reformulated, repackaged and reignited with successful results.

In launching his campaign for Tory leadership on Friday, Jackson Carlaw made a number of assertions about the past direction of the party, not least that it appeased Alex Salmond. This was not just a swipe at Annabel Goldie, and by definition her deputy Murdo Fraser, but also at David McLetchie who made the strategic decisions for six years before them.

A more assertive and bellicose approach will no doubt appeal to party members, who are the people who will determine who wins, but they should ask themselves how opponents might fear Murdo Fraser’s proposal.

For the SNP, an independently organised, pro-Scottish centre-right party must be a threat that will attract much of the Scottish business community and its financial support. It will be welcomed in the fishing and agricultural constituencies that the SNP took from the old Tories and it will be attractive to young professionals and political activists looking for a modern party that eschews collectivism in its various guises.

The Liberal Democrats will fear that the professional classes that favour the union but found the old Tories too hard-faced will be seduced by a more open and liberally appealing home-rule party.

Most of all, the Labour Party will see that its continued embrace of neo-Stalinist centralism risks leaving it behind and positioning it as the least Scottish party of all.

That Scottish political parties must become more detached from their Westminster view, if not fully independent, is a direct consequence of the devolution model. How Labour might expect to find electoral success as the leading North British party, as if it had never delivered devolution, is bewildering to me. A new Scottish-based centre-right party will put fear into Labour most of all – but don’t expect any of its politicians to admit this.

What of Ruth Davidson, the young media-savvy hopeful of London-based party modernisers, who has just declared?

Unfortunately, Fraser’s brave call for a realignment of the centre-right leaves Davidson looking like Annabel Goldie with a makeover. She’s younger and probably more appealing but so far has only repeated the same tired platitudes that would not be out of place being uttered by Maw Broon herself.

We are beginning to get a sense of what Davidson is against (her opponents, obviously), but what does she actually stand for? How can she bring electoral success for Conservatives if she does not offer an analysis of her party’s problems and offer a systematic programme to correct its faults?

Davidson must clarify her intentions and her thoughts.

This week, in his political campaign of shock and awe, we can expect Murdo Fraser to announce further significant endorsements and start to show how he can make a truly Scottish right-of-centre party self-financing and successful.

By staking out such a bold strategy, Fraser has at last shown the leadership the centre-right badly needs. Hopefully his opponents will not carp from the sidelines but will now offer up what they believe is a better approach and explain why it would work when so much of what has been offered in the past has failed.

Fraser still has a great deal of work to do to reassure Conservative members that his vision and his strategy is the right one but his audacious, bold move suggests that his leadership will entail a well-thought-out and demanding journey. It may not be for the faint-hearted, but is that not how politics should be? l Brian Monteith is policy director of ThinkScotland.org