It’s time for the Scottish Tories to deliver more than just the blue shoots of recovery
They have the right leader, the right policies and an opportune political landscape. Now, with the Union’s future at stake...
FOR a long time, supporters of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party have taken their cue from the 13th psalm. You will remember how it goes: ‘How long will thou forget me, O Lord? For ever? How long wilt thou hide thy face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? How long shall mine enemy be exalted over me?’
Each of these questions has, for Scottish Tories, the same mournful answer: For a very long time indeed. And so each year, as surely as summer turns to autumn, commentators and electoral soothsayers ponder the same question: when, Lord, will the party return to prominence? When will its long-awaited breakthrough materialise?
This year, like never before in the devolution era, there are reasons for the Scottish Tories to hope the small, blue shoots of recovery might actually blossom in spring. Next year’s Holyrood election is a proving moment for party leader Ruth Davidson.
Consider the broader political situation. Labour is eating itself, the Lib Dems are parked in a lay-by signposted ‘Irrelevant’ and, at least in Scotland, Ukip remains a dog that will not hunt. True, the SNP, supported by at least 50 per cent of voters, appear impregnable but given the lack of plausible alternatives someone has to provide Nicola Sturgeon with some measure of opposition. So, whisper it, there are hopeful sounds emanating from Tory HQ. This, the party dares to think, might be its moment to break through. The moment when the long-awaited Tory revival might arrive.
Nor is this an obviously fanciful notion. The Conservatives enjoyed themselves during the referendum campaign. The novelty of winning was good for the Tory soul but, more importantly, the party’s defence of the Union was whole-hearted and sincere. The Tories could make their argument without apology. Moreover, in Miss Davidson, they had a leader who could, by virtue of her style, background and beliefs, make Toryism seem, well, normal.
The new Scotland Bill inching its way through the House of Commons will, at long last, help ensure Scottish politics pays some attention to the question of how money is raised and not just how it is spent. The Tories, alone of the major parties, will promise to cut income tax. That, like the party’s Unionist convictions, creates a meaningful point of difference. The Tories will have a message. The question remains whether the Scottish people are interested in listening to it.
Research conducted by the Scottish Referendum Study revealed that 30 per cent of Scotland’s two million No voters based their choice on the emotional and psychological attachment they felt towards the Union. Eighty per cent of those who considered themselves equally Scottish and British voted to preserve the Union. In other words, there are around 700,000 Scots who, on the great question of our time, instinctively agree with the only party whose commitment to the Union is unquestionable.
THIS, then, is the opportunity for Miss Davidson and these are the voters she must target. Just as the post-referendum realignment in Scottish politics has benefited the SNP, shepherding the vast majority of Yes voters into the Nationalist camp, so it should, logically, help the Tories too.
Nevertheless, the scale of the challenge remains daunting. At the last Holyrood election, the Tories won only 276,000 votes, a mere 14 per cent of the ballots cast, as the party lost five seats, reducing it to 15 MSPs.
No wonder the Conservative position remains paradoxical. Next year’s election is one to which they may reasonably look forward with greater excitement and optimism than is usually the case; it is also an election pregnant with foreboding, an election that is set up for Tory gains but might still prove yet another disappointment. And if the party cannot deliver a transformational result now, in these circumstances, when can it ever realistically expect to return to respectability, far less prominence?
This is, given Labour’s woes, an open goal election for the Tories and yet also one in which the party finds itself in the last chance saloon. If not now, O Lord, when?
No one believes only 15 per cent of Scots are Conservativeminded. Opinion polls confirm this. One recent survey reported that 30 per cent of Scots approve of the job David Cameron is doing as Prime Minister. Yet barely half that number will vote for Miss Davidson’s candidates. A new poll this week confirmed this gloomy reality: at present, only 12 per cent of voters intend to endorse Tory candidates next May.
Miss Davidson’s strategy is clear. She will place all her chips on the second, regional list, vote. She will ask Unionist Scots to ‘use that vote intelligently’. She told the Tory conference this week that ‘every cross in the Scottish Conservative box is a vote backing Britain and defending Scotland’s place in i t’ . Just as the SNP wins support from Yes voters who disagree with individual SNP policies, so she hopes her party can become a ‘ big tent’ for Unionists who, rightly, consider the national question the preeminent issue of our time.
There are, as I say, 700,000 voters who, in theory, agree with Miss Davidson. The problem – and it is a significant one – is that many of them do not customarily vote in Holyrood elections. The Union was saved, in part, because so many ‘ Quiet Nos’ trooped to polling stations to do their duty for Scotland, Britain and the Union. But barely half the electorate troubles itself to vote in Holyrood elections and, by and large, Left-wing nationalists are more enthused to do so than Rightwing Unionists, many of whom never much loved the Scottish parliament in the first place.
In fact, Miss Davidson’s position is not unlike Jeremy Corbyn’s. Like the new Labour leader, she must win support from voters who do not usually vote. This is a bold move, even if it may also be the only strategy open to either leader. Bold, because the single most salient fact about non-voters is that they do not vote.
Many of the Unionists to whom Miss Davidson wishes to appeal did not even trouble themselves to vote in May’s
General Election. The story of that contest was that turnout among Yes voters was significantly higher than i t was among No voters. Several hundred thousand Unionist voters simply stayed at home. Perhaps they thought the job was done and the UK secured at the referendum.
Well, they ken noo. The Union will never be secure for as long as the SNP remains in power in Edinburgh. Miss Sturgeon is happy to play a long game, reckoning that the arc of history bends towards independence. Her confidence, on the evidence of the past year, cannot be said to be misplaced. If Unionists want to fight for the Union, they will have to vote for it again and again.
If, one day, there is another referendum, it seems clear that Labour’s commitment to the Union will be vastly weaker than it was last year. A third of its habitual voters have left the erstwhile people’s party for the SNP. Many of them will never return but Labour cannot return to power without winning at least some of them back. That creates a powerful incentive for Labour to flirt with nationalism.
If Labour is trapped, the Tories are at least in the clear. Like the SNP, they know what they believe and can appreciate that a cause is a fiercely powerful thing. That cause, it must be clear, is Unionist far more than it is Conservative.
No wonder Miss Davidson’s star continues to rise. In Manchester this week, Westminster journalists abandoned their customary cynicism and united in their admiration for her poise and passion. They thought they saw a politician who, in other circumstances, might be a credible candidate to succeed Mr Cameron when the Tory leader steps down in 2019. At the very least, she showed that she would be a worthy member of any Tory Cabinet.
Those of us who have known Miss Davidson for many years cannot claim to have anticipated any of this. When she entered the lists to succeed Annabel Goldie she was seen as the ‘continuity candidate’, the chosen daughter l east likely to rock the boat. By contrast, her rival, Murdo Fraser, promised something new, exciting and radical: euthanising the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party and starting again under a different name.
His analysis rested upon the proposition that the Tory ‘brand’ was irredeemably damaged. It was the Ratner’s jew- ellery shop on the political high street and nothing could save it. The party was little more than an old banger, good for scrap and nothing else.
It was time, Mr Fraser argued, to start again with a new vehicle. These days, it is sometimes forgotten that 45 per cent of the Scottish Tory membership agreed with this radical suggestion.
Perhaps that was simply a reflection of how dire the situation had become for the Scottish Tories. The party didn’t have a leadership problem, the problem was the party. David McLetchie and Miss Goldie were each, in their time, as threatening as a celery stick and as decent as a Kirk sermon. And a fat lot of good it did them. For years, the Scottish Tories spent their time apologising for past misdeeds. It didn’t matter that many of these misdeeds were imaginary.
Even now, the messages the party sends to Scottish voters are tinged with a desperate neediness. Yesterday, the party website’s front page listed a number of unobjectionable bromides – more nurses, better schools, a fairer Scotland and so on – and simpered ‘We’ve got more in common than you might think’. The message is as clear as it is defensive: Please Scotland, stop hating us. Give us a chance and you might be surprised by what you find.
In other times, this week’s TNS poll revealing that the Tories are now as popular among middle-class Scots as Labour would be reckoned a wonderful result. But far from being encouraging news, this was merely a reminder of how far Labour has fallen. Labour’s decline to the point at which fewer than one in five ABC1 voters back Kezia Dugdale’s party has not been matched by any significant rise in Tory popularity.
Which leaves one to wonder if, despite Miss Davidson’s popularity and ability, the problem remains the same as it was when she ran for the Tory leadership. It’s not the people; it’s the party.
If the Tories cannot prosper now then when can they? The party has an impressive leader and a portfolio of policies that, when stripped of their Tory affiliation, are more popular than many people imagine. When she was elected leader in 2011, Miss Davidson said the reclamation project upon which she was embarking would take ten years. Next year will be the half-way mark and, as yet, there is no sign that the work is even half done.
Britain increasingly seems a country divided into two one party states. The SNP reigns supreme in Scotland just as the Tories seem, at present, likely to dominate politics in England for the foreseeable future. That is, in the longerterm, a recipe for constitutional instability and one that will make the SNP’s claim that Scotland and England are fundamentally different political cultures seem ever more persuasive.
A Scottish Tory revival would go some way towards refuting that Nationalist shibboleth but, as it cannot be stressed too often, that revival actually needs to happen. The auspices for it have never been better and yet though the path to a renewed Tory relevance is clear, actually getting there remains miserably difficult.
But if not now, then when? And if not Ruth Davidson, then who? To put it another way, if the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party as it is now constituted cannot persuade Unionists to do their duty, then what is the point of it and, indeed, Miss Davidson?