Revealed: the Tories’ plan to separate

7 April 2007

The slide towards extinction in Scotland has persuaded the Tories to draw up a blueprint for separation, says Fraser Nelson. The Scottish Tories would split off — and Cameron’s Conservatives would become the English party

It is never difficult to distinguish between Francis Maude and a ray of sunshine, and the party chairman — as ever — is warning against false optimism in Scotland (not much of that about, it must be said). But, I can reveal, he has gone one further. Mr Maude’s officials have been secretly drawing up the outline of a ‘velvet divorce’ with the Scottish Conservatives, which would give the Scottish Tories a new name, a distinct identity, and make the Conservatives officially as well as in practice a party exclusively devoted to seeking power in England and Wales. However benignly it was presented, such a split would, in effect, mean the final Tory retreat from Scotland, a historic fissure in British Conservatism, and the death of a party defined in many minds by its One Nation Unionism.

But the harder one examines the situation, the clearer it is that there is little left to salvage and little face left to save. As Sir Malcolm Rifkind puts it, being Conservative in his motherland is now seen as ‘something done by consenting adults in private’. The party is no longer hated, as it was in 1997 (when its share of the vote was 18 per cent), nor even pitied, but simply ignored. Voting Tory is seen as a harmless perversion, like Morris dancing or cricket. A despised party could at least repent. But there is no hope for a forgotten party.

Those involved in the secret break-up plan describe it as a win–win situation for Mr Cameron. Should the new Scottish party slide into extinction, then he would not be blamed. In the event that the new movement triggered a centre-right revival in Scotland, and started sending MPs to Westminster, they would sit and vote with the Tories. And — in strict historical fact — the proposal is not, in fact, a betrayal of Conservative heritage at all, but implies a return to the pre-1965 arrangement when the Scottish division of the party was independent and its candidates stood as Scottish Unionists, who voted as a bloc in Westminster.

As the present Tory marriage is only 42 years old, there is a good chance of a quickie divorce. The Scottish Conservatives are already operationally and financially independent; all that unites them with the London-based party is the brand-name, which would change, and the leader — Mr Cameron — who would abdicate his Scottish throne. The new party may call itself the Unionists, and its prospective members have been discreetly mulling a range of options for years. ‘We should call ourselves the Effing Tories,’ an MSP once told me. ‘That’s how they refer to us in Scotland.’

In spite of the upbeat claims, the plan, if enacted, would be Mr Cameron’s first real defeat as party leader. His predecessors always said that the Conservatives did not deserve power in Westminster unless they could revive in Scotland; a claim Mr Cameron has been careful not to repeat. But, as his aides argue, it is not a matter of recovery for Scottish Toryism now, but of resurrection. The task is simply beyond earthly powers.