Scottish Conservatives, 1965–2011

Dennis Churchill

“He would follow disbanding the party by launching a new Right-of-centre party...”
Maybe that is what is needed in England.

Steve Patriarca

It would be good to see Conservatives supporting a referendum on independence providing the English and Welsh get to vote too...I think this would produce a majority for an independent Scotland - surely a great day for English Tories? It is curious now in Central Europe that EU students can go to Scottish universities on equal terms unless they are from England and then they are treated as Non EU -basically as Americans. The Scottish position is indefensible but the Commission is too weak to challenge it.

James de la Mare

The Scots have woken up earlier than many in England have (but not in Northern Ireland where the Ulster Unionists lost their dominance years ago) to the fact that as far as protecting and expanding British or English interests and quality of life goes, the Conservatives have been useless for decades. So useless that it has been predominantly in their periods of government we've lost the Empire, been almost overwhelmed by Europe, lost our reputation for fairness and honesty, lost our military capability and much of our industry and our country's valued infrastructure. And a lot more besides.

Only one of the many conservative PMs even attempted to reverse the trend but, in the long run, without much success. Nothing was done to ensure the stability of society by allowing a proper degree of unimpeded inheritance, so we've been saddled with levelling down to the lowest. No serious effort was made to reduce taxation. Most standards now are determined by money and little else. In short they've been a disaster for years in the economy. They treated with horrific contempt those clear thinking patriotic people who've tried to influence the party from within, notably Powell.

Where do we go in England? With our present standard of voters as evidenced in the Daily Mail, we're going nowhere except downwards. But, please, somebody, reassure me that things are going to get a lot better before I pass away! And I don't want to see the breakup of the United Kingdom either.

joe

The government needs to impose a referendum in Scotland.

"Do you wish to have :-
1. A single Britain on the basis of one person, one vote, one Parliament;
or
2. A totally independent Scotland "

and then abide by the result.

DougtheDug

I'm not sure how Murdo would go about disbanding the Scottish Conservative Party because there isn't one. It's an integral part of the Conservative party and if a new Scottish right-wing party is formed then Murdo's got to hope that the Conservative party are happy to allow that new party to go for the right wing vote in Scotland uncontested.

Murdo's also got to hope that
a) the Conservatives hand over all the assets they hold in Scotland to the new party.

and

b)The Conservative members in Scotland actually want to leave the Conservatives and join a new party.

RCE

Scotland is a bottomless pit for English taxes.

Not sure if the Tories calling it a day there is a good or bad thing. It depends on who is being rejected and the who is doing the rejecting.

David Price

I think the greatest argument against independence, as far as the Scots are concerned, is that as soon as they're on their own, they'll not be able to blame the English any more. Can you imagine that - it will be hellish for them, sitting there seething in their poverty, squalor, bankruptcy unemployment, racism and religious bigotry, with no one to blame but themselves!

I love Scotland, and there's something special about Scottish culture that I really like, but there's also a deep undercurrent of all of the aforementioned - a poverty of positivity and a psychological compulsion to blame their woes on their next-door-neighbour. You see this in the English in 'little Englanders' but North of the Border they seem the majority not just a miserable few.

Craig Strachan

Austin Barry: "I was just told to fuck off."

You were lucky then.

HO Lim - peng

I wonder if this is actually being schemed in order further to undermine the Labour vote in Scotland and boost the SNP. I do hope so, as if Labour lose Scotland, big time, they will never govern UK again.

ThigArLatha

Austin Barry - displaying the charm that your nation is famed for...
On a serious note this(Separation) is actually a good idea. Poll after poll suggests that Scottish opinion is no more left wing than English and so the idea that right wing ideology has no hope in Scotland is a nonsense. The problem is that the Tories are seen as an "English first" party and to represent the Southern English ahead of anyone else. Labour have a similar problem (and now that the Scottish spine of the Labour party has been replaced with a metropolitan leader and primarily English front bench it will only get worse)
The tide of history is against Unionism I suspect but Murdo might just shape a future for a pro-enterprise and freedom party post independence.

daniel maris

New name?

Naming parties is always fun...

Scottish Freedom Party?

Scottish Democratic Party?

United Party of Scotland ?

Enterprise Party of Scotland?

Fergus Pickering

When I was a child in Edinburgh there were no Conservatives at local level at all. They were Progressives, a daft name but no dafter than Labour for the party of the idle and indigent.

Tom Gallagher

Fraser,
If the snug centrism which has been your trademark at the Spectator of late proves to be the guiding star of any successor to the Scottish Conservatives, they are likely to be merely an undistinguished and shortlived successor to the Liberal Unionists.

One of the crucual challenges that will determine the fate of this 11th hour initiative will be its ability to define and sell a progressive patriotism that throws the SNP on the defensive.
If there is energy and bldness I actually don't see this as such a formidable task.
The SNP in many ways stands for old Scotland: Salmond is the autocratic laird who demands obedience from his followers however warped his judgment turns out to be; he pursues his own personal agenda, provoking our closest neighbour to give his backwoodsmnen cheap thrills; and needlessly antagonising a country like the USA, despite longstanding ties with Scotland because it plays well to the SNP gallery; state money is allocated on a discretionary basis to launch projects meant to establish the party's stranglehold over public life; major social problems are swept under the carpet or else simlpistic answers are dreamt up (such as the recent draconian plans to contain intra-religious sectarianism) which are likely to only make matters worse.

Actually any party that dares to try and give a voice to ordinary aspiring Scots who have been frozen out of the corporatist arrangements beloved by many in both Labour and the SNP, is likely to enjoy a rise much quicker than that of the SNP. But it might mean starting all over again just as happened with the Kirk owing to the 'Great Disruption' of 1843.
If there are progressive patriots prepared to embark on this lonely but necessary road, the rewards could be great and the last 12 years of Labour and SNP machine politics and non-devolution, could soon appear to have been a bad dream.

Roy

This is good news, and smells of of a form of sanity rising north of the border.

Ron Todd

Is the plan to position ourself where we can get votes, or to have the policies that we think are right for Scotland (and UK as whole)

The middle groud in Scotland is further to the left so we will change our name and take over liberal/left policies and people will vote for us.

What is the point of getting elected if you do not have good policies?

Like Cameron there is a danger that they will find that the middle ground is not so much where all the voters are but the hole ijn the middle of the doughnut.

paulg

Austin Barry, it makes one wonder how your charm did not win them over.

This is the best thing that could happen,when some thing is cancerous- lance it.
The Scots are innately conservative a distinct Scottish conservative party, will dominate that country and become a powerful force once more.

Jannie Geldenhuys

Anything that hastens the end of the United Kingdom as we know it is to be welcomed.

It is time for a properly federal solution to the mess that is the relationship between the Home Nations.

Simon Stephenson.

It's worth contrasting the thinking behind this move with that which is taking place within the EU hierarchy. Within the EU, it's clearly believed that it's possible for government to act equitably across all its people without being structured around representatives committed primarily and unashamedly to the furtherance of national or sectional interests.

And yet, here we have in Scotland a body of thinking that deems it to be impossible for the interests of the Scottish people to be properly represented and fairly dealt with through a composite organisation drawn from the entire Union. Isn't this tantamount to saying that the political decision-making process can never be other than a melting-pot of tribal or sectional interests, out of which Darwinian selection will prevail?

Dennis Churchill

Our political class is of such low quality, not much more than aged student activists in the main, no senior experience outside politics ,that a shakeup may be exactly what we need. By shake up I mean an English parliament dealing with English interests. I have just watched Andrew Marr (Scot) interviewing Michael Gove(Scot)and Alistair Darling (Scot)Alistair Darling described the mess the last PM,Gordon Brown(Scot) made of cabinet government when he took over from the previous PM,Anthony Blair (Scot)
Is it any wonder England has been turned into an over taxed, overcrowded, multicultural, riot plagued mess where the only acceptable Hate Crime is Anglophobia?
Can you detect any overriding concern about what is in the interests of England and the English in the policies we have seen imposed over the last decade or so?
A move towards either a Federal system or a complete break up at a time when the EU is losing its strangle hold is an ideal opportunity to correct the way we have been going.

Boudicca

Well said Mr Churchill.

Fergus Pickering

So, cutting to the chase, do we see a Labour party of 200 seats or so constantly kept from office by a coalition of Progressives and Conservatives and Tories and Sensibles and anything you like. Led by someone not totally unalike David Cameron I'll buy that.