Perhaps. Because when you cross the Rubicon you obliterate a line in the sand. Or something like that, anyway. Ruth Davidson was elected leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party on a platform promising no more concessions to the SNP. She was the candidate favoured by the party establishment, the candidate for continuity not change.
By contrast, Murdo Fraser’s tilt for the leadership argued that the party should dissolve itself and start again. Four in ten Tory members voted for euthanasia.
The publication today of the Strathclyde Commission’s report on further devolution of powers to the Scottish parliament is perhaps best understood as a synthesis of the Davidson and Fraser approaches. This is still the Conservative and Unionist party but it is unrecognisable from the Conservative and Unionist party we have known and lamented these past twenty years. You might dub it Fraser Measures applied by Davidson Men (and Women).
It is, as you would expect, an unimpeachably Unionist document but one that applies Tory philosophy to devolutionary politics.
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