Andrew Whitaker: Will Scots Tories dump Cameron?

Ruth Davidson and David Mundell in the latters constituency earlier this month. Picture: Ian Georgeson

The creation of a wholly separate party from Westminster could prove the only way forward, writes Andrew Whitaker

THE relentless media coverage of the expected Labour meltdown in Scotland and the anticipated rise and rise of the SNP has to a large extent allowed the Scottish Conservatives to stay out of the spotlight when it comes to forecasted losses to the Nationalists come 7 May.

Willie Rennie’s Scottish Liberal Democrats have arguably also received more column space and broadcast commentary about potential losses than the Conservatives.

Of course, a key reason for this is that the Tories have not been a force in Scottish politics for well over two decades now, and perhaps we are now so used to seeing the party’s pitiful level of support north of the Border at election after election.

The fairly assured performances from Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson in the TV debates in Scotland may also have also to an extent allowed the party to avoid being the main focus of the media when it comes to the prospect of being steamrollered by the SNP.

At risk of stating the obvious, given the fact that the Tories only have one MP in Scotland, the party has much less to lose than Scottish Labour – which if the polls are anything like correct, stands to lose most of its 40 MPs north of the Border.

Scotland Office minister David Mundell is reportedly confident of retaining his Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale seat – a constituency he held with a 4,194 majority in 2010 as the only Tory MP elected in Scotland.

But with some polls, including those of Panelbase and one by Lord Ashcroft, suggesting the party could be in danger of losing even that seat, what would that mean for the party in Scotland?

Imagine a situation where the Conservatives remain in government in some form at Westminster (not something this columnist believes is the most likely outcome on 7 May), but with no MPs in Scotland, where a nationalist party has won the election.

True, the Tories had no seats in Scotland after the 1997 election, but at that time it was blindingly obvious the party would be in opposition for many years to come and was also a time when the idea of an SNP hegemony in Scotland was unthinkable.

Despite the powers coming to Holyrood after the Smith Commission process, it would still be possible for a Tory government at Westminster to impose ultra-austerity on Scotland – a country where it could have no MPs in and may be heading for political extinction.

But whether the Tories keep their sole MP in Scotland, are wiped out or even slightly add to their Scottish representation at Westminster, the writing could well be on the wall for the party in its existing form.

Ms Davidson has vastly improved her public performances in the last two years or so, but it’s hard to argue that she speaks to anyone who isn’t already a Conservative, defending billions of pounds of cuts and the “bedroom tax”.

That, taken together with a brand so toxic in Scotland that Tory politicians were widely viewed as being damaging to the No campaign in the independence referendum, what is there then any future for the party north of the Border?

It’s a semi-forgotten campaign now, after all that’s happened in the last four years, but the failed Tory leadership bid by MSP Murdo Fraser on a platform of launching a renamed breakaway centre-right Scottish party that was independent from the Tories in London, was something that made an electrifying political impact at the time.

Mr Fraser is probably also a politician who only speaks to those who are already on the centre-right, and, rightly or wrongly, is associated with a Thatcherite-style agenda, which is utterly toxic in Scotland.

True, Mr Fraser was also defeated fairly and squarely in the contest in late 2011 by Ms Davidson, who has upped her game somewhat in the second half of the parliament after a shaky start as party leader.

But no-one other than Mr Fraser, both during the 2011 Scottish Tory leadership contest and afterwards, has ever really able to come up with an answer as to why the party would do any better in its current form.

It may well be that the Scottish Tories will eventually be forced to adopt Mr Fraser’s proposal for a new centre-right party in Scotland – a model used in Germany, where the centre-right Bavarian CSU is a distinct entity from Angela Merkel’s governing CDU.

However, as so often in politics, it may be one of those amusing ironies that a politician who so heavily rails against a controversial idea – as Ms Davidson did in 2011 against Mr Fraser’s plan – may be forced to pursue a similar proposal herself.

Imagine again if the Tories were wiped out in Scotland come 7 May. Regardless of whether Mr Cameron is in government or not, a Tory-free Scotland, now Nationalist dominated, could force Ms Davidson’s hand.

It’s also entirely possible that the Tory leadership at UK level would not resist such a move and be content to simply offer help to their centre-right colleagues at election times.

There is a very real chance of course that people in Scotland will simply have no truck with centre-right politics in whatever guise, due to its association with seemingly never-ending austerity and privatisations, coupled with an ideological zeal to hand tax cuts to the wealthiest.

In fairness, similar anti-Tory attitudes prevail in large parts of the north of England and in London, with Labour having some of its best poll ratings in the UK capital, where Mr Cameron’s close ally, Boris Johnson, has been mayor for seven years.

Perhaps simply changing the name of the Tories would ultimately make little difference in Scotland, given the hostility there is to policies imposed on Scots during the last parliament, such as the erosion of people’s rights at work, the introduction of a cap on compensation for unfair dismissal and the imposition of charges for bringing such claims.

But Ms Davidson or her predecessor some way down the line may be forced to accept that ripping it up and starting again may be the only way forward for the party in Scotland, as well as pursuing a slightly less harsh approach than Mr Cameron and George Osborne.

Perhaps the party may even have to embrace a form of more One Nation Conservatism in Scotland and accept what most Scots appear to want through public services funded by a system of more progressive tax if it is to have any future at all.