Scots Tories may find that SNP is stealing the radical show

IN THE heady years of the mid-Eighties, it was possible, with the help of a decent bottle of claret, to get Tory Cabinet ministers to muse on the prospect of being the permanent government of the United Kingdom. They would go dreamy-eyed, gaze into the middle distance and dream of power uninterrupted. But that was before Tony Blair and Gordon Brown invented "new" Labour and turned the Tory dream into a nightmare.

As the Scottish Conservatives gather today for their conference, such musings - and to be fair, they were only ever the indulgence of a minority - can be seen for what they were: the arrogant fantasies of politicians drunk on power, if not claret. They were simply unable to comprehend the old clich that nothing lasts forever and that it applied in politics too.

The Scottish Tories had never been as starry-eyed as their colleagues south of the Border. For them, the rot set in a parliamentary term earlier. By 1997, they were left, to few people’s surprise, with no MPs at Westminster. It is possible that the Conservatives, the only party in post-war Scotland to win more than half the popular vote in a general election, might have become extinct were it not for devolution; the very thing they opposed for so long.

The system of proportional elections allowed them to return to national politics in the Scottish Parliament. From a base of just 82 councillors in 1997, they now have 123 members in town halls, 18 MSPs, one Westminster MP and two Euro MPs. That is progress, but it is slow progress. In their heart of hearts, the Tories know it.

MICHAEL Howard, when he addresses his Caledonian clan in Dumfries, will present himself as a prime minister-in-waiting, but despite his recent successes against Mr Blair there are few who believe that he will be moving into 10 Downing Street in May. And that harsh reality turns the spotlight on the Scottish Conservatives.

Come the next Scottish Parliament elections in 2007, it will have been a decade since the Tory wipe-out and, one would assume, time for the Conservatives to be back in government. And yet even that seems unlikely.

There are two reasons for that. There is still the collective Scottish consciousness of the poll tax, of the hostility to home rule and of Mrs Thatcher - although, like Tony Blair today, she was not as unpopular as many like to think or to remember. But the Tories’ lack of progress, or rather lack of substantial progress, goes deeper than the anti-Thatcher folk memory. It comes down to their lack of a distinct, radical vision for Scotland. And responsibility for this must rest with their leader, David McLetchie.

Good on his feet in parliament, clever and at ease with real people he may be, but Mr McLetchie has never answered the question: what are the Scottish Tories for? Murdo Fraser, who still counts as a young Turk and Brian Monteith, a not-so-young-anymore Turk, have been champing at the bit for more radicalism. They would like to see the Tories champion fiscal autonomy, not as a route to independence but as a means of showing Scottish voters that a low-tax economy is the way to prosperity. But their efforts have been blocked by the cautious Edinburgh lawyer that Mr McLetchie is - or rather was up until quite recently.

SO WHERE are the radical Tory policies? There is no sign that Mr McLetchie wants, for example, a bonfire of the Scottish quangos or to slash vast numbers of public-sector workers or bring in education vouchers or even promise to cut the tartan tax. Some or all of these policies could be popular. Properly proselytised, they could create a new public mood for small government and send a signal that the Scottish Tories were a serious right-of-centre party.

Mr McLetchie clearly believes in moving slowly. The danger of that is that he could be over-taken. The Scottish National Party is beginning to move towards the centre and beyond by looking not just at low business taxes but at low personal taxes. Serious people in the SNP are beginning to think about the benefits of small government. It may not be long before the SNP, like other nationalist parties across Europe, continues formally to support "independence" but pragmatically aims for office based on running a low-tax, pro-enterprise Scotland with greater devolved powers. And that could put the Scottish Tories out of business.