The Limits of Cameronism

Edmund Jerk

There has to be some bourgeois Scottish conservatives/classic-liberals, who might vote Tory surely? This is the home of Adam Smith and David Hume we're talking about! It can't all be socialism, deep fried Mars bars, free University education and Trainspotting up there!? I refuse to believe that after 13 years of state spending and the like, that middle-class Scots want more of the same.

Bill Rees

Wouldn't Scottish independence be better for everyone?

tommyt

Pretty good aritcle Alex, in addition I would make the following points.

Labour - Tory switchers, at least in the seats Labour held pre-Blair are likely to be thin on the ground in England as well as Scotland.

If an alienated Labour voter fancies a change then they have three options in Scotland, where, let's remember the SNP are in government, rather than two in England, making a switch even less likely.

The parties who hold seats in "natural" Tory territory in Scotland are predominantly the Libs and the SNP and I cant remember either of them losing a seat to the tories since 1979 except a single by election reversal in 1992. Why ? Because those parties are perceived as occupying the centre ground in Scotland whereas the Tories, fairly or not, are associated with shutting mines, shipyards, steelworks and introducing the poll tax. The aspirant middles classes in Scotland are more likely to have a father or uncle who rails against Thatcher than the similar demographic in the South. That remains an influencing factor.

So its a sare fecht for Scottish Tories even though some of them from time to time do make sense.

shorpe

@Edmund

Read it back - he didn't say there was zero Tory support in Scotland, just that it's only 17%. That 17% could easily include the type of people you're talking about.

Jupiter

Most Scottish conservative voters have moved to England or have emigrated. That is one reason the Tories do so badly here. Labour voting numpties in council estates are never going to move anywhere.

Yow Min Lye

Scotlamd is a prime example of the kind of client state that New Labour have being trying to create in England since 1997.

I fear that the only way that Conservatism will ever recover in Scotland is once its slobbering lips are prised from off the English teat. Then - after a touch of tough Greek-style economic medicine to cut the state sector down to size, traditional Caledonian enterprise might just be able to do the rest.

shorpe

You know, conservatives (small and big C) might make a lot more headway in Scotland if they stopped talking about Labour loyalty as some kind of mental illness, thus casually writing off several million people as brainless bovines.

Richard Lyle

This Labour-voting numptie went to St Andrews. I left Scotland for six months 15 years ago and haven't quite made it home yet. Next year in Jersusalem (it's a farm in East Lothian).

The Thatcher legacy means that the Tories will struggle to have a strong presence in Scottish politics for a couple of generations at least. Those of us who are Thatcher's children or were one of Maggie's Millions would find it very hard to vote Conservative even if we believed the current Conservatives' avowals that the party had changed.

De Rigueur

And him with a scottish name too! You'd think he'd get something from those scottish bigots?

Snowman

Yow Min Lye @ 6.53:

Is there anything else that needs saying? Methink not, you’ve said all.

Edmund Jerk

Yes I read the 17% shorpe. It just seems odd that there are so few Tory voters up there; there must be some non-lefty unionists' who would consider voting Tory. Is this Thatchers' legacy? Did she really do that much damage to Scotland's economy?

merlinthepig

"A land of make believe and kilted unicorns in which every child receives a tartan pony"

If that's what the heroin does for you, no wonder it's so popular up there.

Kennybhoy

Yow Min Lye is pretty well spot on. With a couple of provisos.

By far the greater part of Labour's electoral base in Scotland is not made up of welfare dependants, very few of whom actually vote. It is made up of that section of the working population who are directly employed by the state, or who's employers are dependant upon state contracts. This section of the electorate have even more to lose from a Conservative recovery than those on welfare. They actively use whatever influence they have over their welfare dependant fellow countrymen to maintain them in that dependancy...

Secondly. Friends and acquaintances involved in electoral canvassing here, none of them Tories incidentally, assure me that there are many more actual and potential Conservative voters in Scotland than one might think. Perhaps 25-25% of the electorate. The distorting effects of FPTP ensure that the Conservative vote is diluted or just stays at home.

Oh and incidentally folks, Labour's clientele south of the boder should not be dismissed. While not as large as it is up here it does exist. And I suspect that it has been deliberately built up in Northern and Midland marginal seats...

Major Plonquer

Whoa. Why should anyone even bother about Scotland any more. As a Scot myself, albeit one of the vast number who buggered off to somewhere with more individual freedom and opportunity (Communist China), I feel I am qualified to explain to non-Scots that Scotland is a place where people actually think socialism is a good idea.

Add to this that the Nats think leaving the British Union and the Pound to join the European Union and the Euro will somehow make Scotland 'free' and you start to see the picture.

The people of Scotland want 'freedom' and 'change' on Thursday. Just so long as the giro arrives on Friday as usual.

As everyone in Scotland well knows - a REAL Scot is someone who will do ANYTHING for Scotland (except of course actually live there).

Scotland is now the first international casualty of extreme brain-drain. Scotland moved to Hong Kong 20 years ago. There's nobody left in Scotland with more than two brain cells. So don't even bother listening to what anyone there has to say.

tommyt

well

this has turned into a right nasty wee thread. If as a scot living in Scotland I only have two brain cells I am happy to donate one of them to help increase the number of most contributors.

If you include the offshore industries as part of the Scottish economy you will actually find that less of our economy is reliant on the public sector than in England.

Also, to refer you to a parliamentary answer given in 1997 (by an Englishman presumably with a full brain cell complement). Between 1979 & 1997 Scotland contributed (net) £27 Billion to the UK exchequer.

Is it any wonder why many of my countrymen will be supporting Algeria, Slovenia and the USA next month. (Sorry I appreciate that is a modern cultural reference which most of you might not get)

Kittler

Lots of "natural conservatives" in Scotland don't vote Tory because they support National Sovereignty.

Richard Thomas

There are to me a number of reasons why Scots do not vote Tory. Accepting we can be benefits junkies and a fair few suckle at the public sector teat, but these in themselves seem a bit pat to explain our heresy. My take is that part of our reluctance to accept Toryism lies in our culture. Some of us are thrawn and the bald expression of some of the free market doctrines will make some of us pick up the opposite because we're born to be disputatious; others have the mebbes aye mebbes naw frame of mind which doesn't engage with the bucket of cold water certainty with which Mrs Thatcher pursued argument. For myself, I was brought up to look for enough - you had enough for your needs and a bit put by but it was just wrong to seek the sort of material wealth that many wished and were encouraged to wish for under both the Tories and I'm bound to say the Blair regime as well. It seems to me that part also lay in the tone of Thatcherism - the Sermon on the Mound as delivered missed the right notes. It reads better.

John Whyte

As (yet another) Scot living in Scotland, I felt that I may be able to add something to this topic. There are actually quite a lot of what you might want to call small-c conservatives in Scotland, they simply cannot vote for the Conservative party because of the psychological conditioning that the Tories are evil that has been going on in Scotland for the last 20-30 years. This has mostly been spread by the Labour party, but also the SNP. Before the 2007 Holyrood elections, the Tories polled virtually the same share of the vote as the Liberal Democrats but, due to the vote being spread around constituencies, almost all of the MSPs were from the party list. Most Scottish conservatives vote Lib-Dem or SNP as they are more acceptable to discuss iwth people. While I don't want to sound like Peter Hitchens, if the Tories did implode and a new, conservative-minded party took its place, I believe that it may do quite well. I admit, however that shifting the core Labour vote is an immense task.

I believe in the UK very much, and despite what some would have you believe, so do most Scots. I simply believe that we are all better-off together but I just wish that all of the Scottish Parties would be more keen to remove some of the public sector monolith here in Scotland. It saddens me to think that the money (however indirect from the Barnett formula) from North Sea oil seems to be spent on keeping mandarins and QUANGOs gainfully occupied.

Edward

Let's be fair, friends. I think Alex is saying that only the 83% of Scots who don't back the Tories are mentally disabled sheep.