Real leadership required if Scots Tories are to go it alone

RADICAL new party to enliven Scottish politics, or old wine in a new bottle? Murdo Fraser’s proposal to split the Scottish Conservatives from the UK party and create a new force on the centre-right in Scotland has not just dramatised his campaign for the leadership, it has unleashed a long-needed debate about the aims and purposes of the Conservatives in Scotland, their relationship with the rest of the UK and their approach to the looming challenge of an independence referendum.

With some notable exceptions, this radical proposal is being supported by senior figures within the party. And there is one point at least on which he and the other two leadership candidates – Ruth Davidson and Jackson Carlaw – can agree. The party is in a parlous state. Its fortunes have barely recovered from the wipe-out of the 1997 general election. Re-invigoration is desperately needed. The party cannot simply cling to a passive Micawberish posture hoping for something to turn up.

Open discussion of this radical proposal is therefore to be warmly welcomed. There are certainly many within the party who feel it cannot be a credible voice in Scotland unless it is independent from the UK party and develops its own distinctive voice and persona. However, senior figures such as Lord Forsyth and David Mundell, the party’s lone MP, are not at all convinced. And many older supporters within the party will see in all this a further appeasement of the Nationalists.

This debate is needed for another reason. The brand name is still widely viewed as tainted here and a credible centre-right voice in Scotland, challenging the high tax, high spending, big state orthodoxies of the other parties, needs to be heard.

Fraser’s strategy is high risk. And there are some critical caveats to his rhetoric of sweeping change. A credible separate Scottish party by definition cannot rely on financial support from London. It will need to find its own financial sponsors to fund its organisation and campaigns. Also, does a “clean break” really mean the abandonment of the party’s existing organisation and structure, or is it a renaming and rebranding? For such change to be credible, it needs more than a radical leader but a team of fresh faces in key positions.

Arguably the biggest challenge here will be in Murdo Fraser’s leadership abilities. Is he the man who can take on Alex Salmond in the parliament as well as spearhead the biggest overhaul of the party since the 1960s? Such a dual task will need the most forceful and inspirational leadership if the “new party” rocket is not simply to flop back to earth.

Leadership qualities will need to come to the fore. The public have yet to see and hear how the two other candidates propose to lift the Scottish Conservatives out of the long rut of defeat. But a critical ingredient will be their ability to lead and inspire a revival of the centre right. This is the matter at issue.