When I was a reporter in the Scottish Parliament 15 years ago, the Tories had stopped being hated. They were pitied, which was worse. Voting Tory was not seen as a giant evil but a harmless English perversion – roughly in the same bracket as cross dressing, or cricket. The party looked dead, a joke even to its own staff members (to whom its support seemed to be confined). There were discussions about renaming it; Jamie McGrigor, a Tory MSP, suggested “the effing Tories” because that was how the party had become known.
How different things look today. The Scottish Conservatives have more than doubled their number of council seats, overtaking Labour to become the official opposition in municipal Scotland just as they are in the Scottish Parliament. In my part of the world, the Scottish Highlands, there are now a dozen Tory councillors – up from zero. The Western Isles has elected a Tory councillor for the first time ever. Places like Paisley and Fife, that had been seen as utterly inhospitable terrain for Tories, are voting for their councillors.
They have taken a seat in Calton in Glasgow, one of the most deprived parts of the city – and, for that matter, Western Europe. My story for The Scotsman newspaper revealed that male life expectancy in Calton was just 54. Now, it’s held by the Tories. Once, you’d have guessed that Glasgow’s prosperous West End – one of the best places to live in the world – was the place most likely to incubate a Tory revival. But Toryism, now, is broadcasting on a different wavelength. The results will amaze and astound the Tory leadership: no one really knows what to make of this.
Fraser Nelson speaks to Ruth Davidson on the Spectator Podcast:
The 2015 Brexit and 2014 Scottish referendums have reset British politics, scrambling party political allegiances. This general election campaign shows new currents behind British life and politics – and the rebirth of unionism, with Theresa May’s Tories doing well on both sides of the border and in Wales. Across Britain the idea of Labour being for the poor, the Tories for the rich, needs to be reassessed. The idea of the Tories being the party of the posh seems to be buried at this election. Class is not a factor in British politics anymore: polls show ABC1 voters split almost the same for Labour and Tories as the C2DE voters. YouGov recently declared that “class would tell you little more about a person’s voting intention that looking at their horoscope or reading their palms”
The SNP were flat in this election: the gains in Scotland, as in England, want to the Tories. Ruth Davidson has halted the SNP’s momentum and gained plenty of her own. It’s all rather amazing: the result of this general election might not be in doubt but the currents behind British life and politics are moving and the political map is being redrawn before our eyes. And the main election is still to come.
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