Revealed: the Tories’ plan to separate

04 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

Mr Cameron asked David Mundell, the party’s sole Scottish MP, to prepare a memo on the situation in June last year. The reply was bleak. There is a ‘simple lack of thinkers’ in Scotland, the shadow Scotland secretary said. ‘There are more obvious problems than solutions emanating from Scotland from a party point of view.’ In other words: if the Scottish Tory party were a horse, it would be shot. Or, more diplomatically, rebadged and cut adrift, with every good wish from Notting Hill.

All this could not contrast more sharply with the bullish rhetoric you will hear from shadow Cabinet members as they campaign in Scotland, offering full backing to a team they are planning to orphan. This is why they will vigorously and predictably deny any plan to split the party. But well-placed sources, on both sides of the border, say that a ‘name change’ (the preferred euphemism for formal separation) is already being discussed at high levels, and is likely before Christmas. Crucially, Lord Laidlaw, who effectively bankrolls the Scottish party, is said to have reluctantly given his consent.

The 3 May elections will by no means be all bad news for Mr Cameron. Conservatives are likely to do well in the 312 English councils being contested. The Welsh Conservatives are looking perky (and, therefore, are in no danger of being evicted from the mainstream Tory fold). Even in Scotland, the dire state of the Tories is at least sweetened for Mr Cameron by the anti-Labour mood sweeping the governing party’s heartlands — and Mr Brown’s old campaign tricks are demonstrably failing. The Scottish National Party is leading every poll.

Yet, for all this, support for independence — as distinct from SNP support — is no greater than it was a decade ago. This is not about breaking up the Union. As so often, the Scottish voter is longing to give authority a slap — but this time authority is wearing a red, rather than a blue, lapel. The second-largest party, the Liberal Democrats, can hardly profit from anti-Labour sentiment after having been in coalition with them for eight years. The Scottish Tories are a danger only to themselves. The SNP vote is being almost entirely powered by an anti-Labour whirlwind.