Scots Tories’ main funder won’t back ‘separatist’ party

him in the leadership contest, Sir Jack last night put out a new statement standing by his warning.

Meanwhile, Mr Fraser, who boasted about the “scars on my back” due to Tory electoral failure in Scotland, unveiled a series of new big business backers for his party at his leadership campaign launch yesterday, amid a claim from a supporter that Sir Jack was using his financial muscle to “threaten” supporters of the breakaway proposals and shut down debate.

At his launch, attended by nearly 100 supporters, Mr Fraser warned the Scottish Conservative Party “will never succeed in its current form” and that it had to either “adapt or die”.

He said: “I have, over the summer, spoken to a great many people who are either current donors or former donors, and people who share our values and have never given money to the party.

“They have been paying for successive campaigns with absolutely no political progress and there is a great deal of appetite for a new centre-right force in Scotland amongst people in the business community.”

But Sir Jack, whose Focus on Scotland group raises about £800,000 a year for the party through exclusive private dinners, said his group would “not entertain any direct approach” from a renamed party led by Mr Fraser that would split from the UK Conservatives.

In a strongly worded attack on the proposed shake-up, he suggested any breakaway group would struggle to raise funds following a divorce from the party at UK level.

The statement issued on behalf of Sir Jack said: “Focus on Scotland is the vehicle that currently provides the majority funding for the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party (SCUP). This funding arrangement would most certainly not apply to Mr Fraser’s breakaway party.

“So it would be interesting, in fact it would be necessary, to know in terms of openness and transparency from whom Mr Fraser expects to receive funding to finance his separatist political group.

“We are talking here of the need to find £1m a year to run any new political organisation, comparable to the existing SCUP, in order to fund the numerous election campaigns – general elections, Scottish parliamentary elections, European parliamentary elections and local government Elections – in which Mr Fraser’s party would have to be actively involved.

“There certainly has been no approach to us from the UK Conservative Party to consider redirecting funding to Mr Fraser’s separatist group. Nor do we expect one. Nor would we be likely to react favourably to any such approach. Nor would we entertain any direct approach from Mr Fraser.

“Moreover, one is entitled to ask if Mr Fraser does not win the leadership election, will he and his supporters proceed to form a breakaway party? For having scandalised SCUP by word and deed, they would surely have no place within SCUP in the future.”

Tory MSP Alex Johnstone, one of Mr Fraser’s key backers, said Sir Jack’s initial statement about withholding funds had been an attempt to “threaten” the party into backing away from supporting the new party.

He said: “We need to have a contest fought in the right spirit, as some of the words issued on Monday were divisive.”

But Sir Jack insisted last night that he stood by the statement and said Mr Fraser’s proposals were “crazy” and would be “disastrous”.

Two other long-standing Tory backers did appear at Mr Fraser’s campaign launch, with one supporter, Robert Gibbons, the founding chairman of Highland Spring water, saying £500,000 had already been pledged for the new party in the run-up to the next Holyrood elections.

Robert Kilgour, a London-based property and care home tycoon, also promised to transfer annual “direct donations” of tens of thousands of pounds that he makes to the UK Conservatives to Mr Fraser’s proposed centre-right party.

Scottish Tory transport spokesman Jackson Carlaw, Mr Fraser’s other rival in the leadership contest, described Sir Jack’s stark warning about funding as a “fatal blow” to the plan to dissolve the Scottish Conservatives.

Mr Carlaw said: “Now our principal funders in Focus in Scotland, led by Sir Jack Harvie, have made clear that they are sticking with a Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party at the heart of the UK Conservative Party.

“This is surely a fatal blow to any such proposal.”

Ms Davidson said: “We need debate within the party on how we go forward, but unfortunately, while Murdo has asked the right question, he has come up with a disastrously wrong answer.

“I want to debate how we renew and reconnect our party, not how we tear it up.”

There was a split, too, in the Focus on Scotland organisation last night, after it emerged that one of the senior members of the group of wealthy Scottish Tory donors was property millionaire John McGlynn – a supporter of Mr Fraser’s leadership bid and of his plans to reform the party north of the Border.