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

For the son of an Aberdonian stockbroker, David Cameron has had an uneasy relationship with Scotland. It is a land of massacred Conservatives, even less hospitable to his party today than it was during the great Tory wipe-out ten years ago. In his visits north of the border, the Tory leader has not so much tried to lead the remaining Scottish Tories to victory, but to check their pulse. In London, there is serious concern that the patient is not responding.

No clear protocols exist for declaring a political party dead, but the Scottish Tories offer a few clues. Some of its candidates, for example, have been campaigning for the Scottish Parliament elections on 3 May using only their own names, knowing that the word ‘Conservative’ is a liability. With only four weeks to go to voting day, the Conservatives have dropped to a mere 11 per cent in the polls. Strip out staff members and their blood relatives, and this is as close as a supposedly national party gets to rock bottom.