Jenny Hjul
A conspicuously wealthy, disproportionately rural elite hectoring the electorate about SNP failings will have less clout.
Voters in England opted for a Tory government in the General Election because they feared a deal between Labour and the SNP, an analysis by a leading pollster has found. Survation conducted an inquiry into why opinion polls predicting a hung parliament were so inaccurate. It asked people it had polled in the run-up to May 7 how they had cast their votes on the day. Some 15 per cent did not vote for the party they said they would back and a significant number, it turned out, were “tactical Tories”.
These, unlike “shy Tories” who just don’t like admitting they are right-wing, are reluctant Conservatives who went for what they considered was the least awful choice on polling day.
Unfortunately, such tactical voting seemed to be less effective in Scotland, although some of us had nurtured high hopes that a pro-Unionist effort would stop the SNP winning all their seats. Having fought, and won, an independence referendum, it was hard to stomach the subsequent Nationalist surge. There was a late but determined regrouping of people who had campaigned for Better Together and in many neighbourhoods, mine included, voters were urged to support whomever had the best chance of beating the SNP.
Behind this drive, which I for one endorsed, was a movement calling itself Scotland in Union. Led by former soldier Alistair Cameron, it tried to rekindle the esprit de corps that saved Scotland from secession last September. In the end, 56 out of 59 Scottish seats were won by the SNP and Scotland became a one-party state. Panic set in among the annihilated opposition and Scots who hadn’t voted for the Nationalists (about 50 per cent of the electorate) felt unrepresented.
This has left many searching for a political home, and thinking they have found it in self-appointed alternatives. Scotland in Union is one. Instead of disbanding after their good intentions in the election got us nowhere, they have re-emerged, sounding like a quasi Conservative party in all but name.
Mr Cameron (Alistair not David) gave a speech over the weekend in which he said there should not be another independence vote until 2030. He also said that Scotland needs to move beyond fights about the constitution to policies that will improve people’s lives.
Scotland in Union has promised that, before the Holyrood elections next May, they will remind people of the benefits of remaining part of the UK, benefits they believe should be articulated more clearly.
“We will remind people that political debates should be about tax, spending, health, welfare, security and the other functions of the state, rather than indulging empty separatist gestures at the expense of running the country properly,” he said in Edinburgh.
There is nothing wrong with this message, if you are a Unionist, but nor is there anything original in it. There is already a party saying exactly the same thing: the Scottish Conservatives.
Alistair Cameron said he believed movements such as Scotland in Union should hold the SNP to account. But that is what Ruth Davidson, leader of the Tories here, is trying to do day in and day out in the Scottish Parliament, as of course are Labour and the Liberal Democrats. These unelected, untested do-gooders mean well but they run the risk of diluting the legitimate opposition. There are others. There was apparently talk from some at the game fair in Scone on Saturday about forming a countryside party. There may well be more pro-Union alliances desperate to make their voices heard and stop the Nationalist juggernaut if no one else will.
Perhaps these political pop-ups do not feel at home with the Tories (Scotland in Union thinks the party still has an image problem), yet to an outsider they bear all the hallmarks, though they say they are non-partisan. In another age they would be harmless – idealists who talk among themselves and convince each other they have the answers – but they present an unnecessary distraction.
Some of Scotland in Union’s cheerleaders have very deep pockets and have made it known they will offer financial support to the group. There is a call for further donations on the group’s website, to fund its events and communicate its goals. What do they hope to achieve? They say they believe the referendum result was decisive and they want Scotland to move on; but saying it does not make it happen, as any real politician would tell them.
A conspicuously wealthy, disproportionately rural elite hectoring the electorate about SNP failings will have less clout than the Tories themselves, and could even prove counter-productive.
Under Ms Davidson, the Scottish party is not the old Etonian, Oxbridgeeducated cliche of its Westminster flagship, but an increasingly modern cross-section of Scottish society. With the collapse of the Labour Party in Scotland, they have the best opportunity in a generation to become the main party of opposition at Holyrood in the event of another Nationalist victory.
Ms Davidson, young, openly gay and politically progressive, has confounded Tory stereotypes and detoxified the party in many people’s eyes. A new wave of aspirational Tory youths, such as 21-year-old Nathan Wilson of Motherwell, is ready to follow her instead of going with the left-wing flow. He told a BBC Scotland reporter that he and his friends had set up the firstever Conservative Association at Strathclyde University. “If we can establish a branch at Strathclyde, an institution which is not exactly friendly to the core beliefs of Conservatism, we can certainly attract young people from all over Scotland,” he said.
While Labour is still to recover from its mauling in May, and has still to elect a new leader, the Scottish Tories are busy clearing out the dead wood and selecting younger candidates from different backgrounds as replacements.
Not before time, MSPs who have occupied the Conservative benches at Holyrood since 1999 are retiring. Ms Davidson said hers was the only new face at the last Scottish election but there is a competition for seats. There are 100 on the Conservatives’ approved list and another 70 have applied since the General Election.
But they have a long way to go to end Nationalist domination. The Conservatives managed just 434,097 votes in May, coming third behind nearly 1.5 million votes for the SNP and some 700,000 for Labour. Ms Davidson has a mountain to climb.
It would be ironic if, having convinced unlikely converts among the young and the working class of the merits of her centre-right cause and turned them into new Tories, she was abandoned by people who look, sound and behave like old Tories.
If the SNP is ever to be defeated, and the threat of independence removed, the other parties must reassert themselves.
Regardless of the purpose Scotland in Union served in May 2015, there is no place for non-parties in May 2016.
A conspicuously wealthy, disproportionately rural elite hectoring the electorate about SNP failings will have less clout