Scottish Political News: Stirling may sound Tory death knell

An excellent comment piece in today's Sunday Times from Tim Luckhurst. I couldn't have put it better myself so therefore have just reproduced it below.

The other day I posted that Stirling's new party is likely to face the same prospect as the Scottish People's Alliance in 2003 along with a plethora of other new start parties over the years. I still think that is the most likely case, however if Stirling manages to maintain the momentum he has had over the past week (again unlikely) then Tim's prediction of the death knoll sounding for the Tories in Scotland won't be too far from the truth.

Hopefully Annabel Goldie reads Tim's article and decided now is the time to take decisive action. Was that a blue moon?

The Sunday Times January 07, 2007

Comment: Tim Luckhurst: Stirling may sound Tory death knell

It is easy to sneer at Archie Stirling’s decision to launch a political party. British history is littered with alpha males who have found conventional parties frustratingly reluctant to do their bidding. Oswald Mosley took the build-your-own route. So, in their very different ways, did Jim Sillars (the breakaway Scottish Labour party of 1976), Tommy Sheridan (twice: the SSP and Solidarity), Robert Kilroy-Silk (Veritas) and George Galloway (Respect). But if each of these examples represents the triumph of ego over electoral reality, Stirling deserves to be classed in a separate category.
The closest parallel to his pro-enterprise, unionist movement, entitled the Scottish Democrats, is the party established by Shirley Williams, David Owen, Bill Rodgers and Roy Jenkins in the Limehouse declaration of January 1981. The Social Democratic party contained more than its fair share of bloated egos. It was blighted by the dominance of politicians for whom listening to other people was an intolerable chore. But it had a political purpose. Labour had become so remote from the values and aspirations of its core supporters that an alternative was urgently required. Stirling has identified the same debilitating flaw in the Scottish Conservative party.

The Tartan Tories’ official response, that they are “so relaxed about this we are horizontal”, may well be true. They are not blessed with a plethora of great thinkers. But the razor-sharp young Etonians who have restored real acuity to the Conservative party’s national operation recognise the threat. They understand Stirling has the capacity to turn the Scottish Conservatives’ prospects on May 3 from grim to abysmal. Stirling offers a series of commitments designed to appeal straight to the hearts of natural Conservatives who have been repeatedly betrayed in the decade since Michael Forsyth left our national stage.

Every sentient Scottish Conservative knows that the gap between what Tory MSPs at Holyrood say and the beliefs of once-loyal Conservative voters is as wide as the Atlantic and as deep as the San Andreas Fault. Converting to devolution just before it proved itself as wasteful and corrupt, as they had spent the previous two decades predicting, took abject stupidity. The coherent approach after the 1998 referendum was for Conservatives to sit at Holyrood but to criticise and, if necessary, condemn it. But that required the courage to stand out against the temporary consensus that home-rule must, somehow, create better government.

Deprived of experienced leadership, and conned by Donald Dewar’s deluded certainty it would kill nationalism, they did the opposite. It is an open joke in Scottish Conservative circles that grassroots party members regard the 17 Tory MSPs at Holyrood as treacherous collaborators. No wonder, faced with repeated opportunities to expose and condemn the ruling coalition’s wasteful inefficiency, they have responded like frightened rodents.

Their former leader, David “Taxi” McLetchie, found the “all in it together” atmosphere of Holyrood so comfortable he played golf with Jack McConnell and made bigger expenses claims than many Labour MSPs. The present incumbent, Annabel Goldie, lacks McLetchie’s fondness for the high life. Sadly she lacks his drive and acidity as well. Her colleagues appear much keener to be loved than feared by their opponents.

A Conservative party willing to condemn the devolved culture of subsidy, sanctimony and self-righteousness would be welcomed by aspiring families throughout this country. There are tens of thousands of Scots who do not work for the state and even more who recognise the burden imposed on business by the 3,000 separate items of legislation passed since 1998. Even public servants are beginning to resent the Scottish executive’s self-interested determination that all power must be centralised in Edinburgh and all services supplied by the state.

Goldie has failed utterly to grasp her opportunity. She has not even begun to exploit the growing threat to the union posed by the Scottish National party’s dynamic and charismatic assault on the executive. Consistent opinion poll evidence shows electoral support for the Scottish Conservatives lower than at any time since the introduction of universal suffrage. Even the poll tax, that Stygian nadir of Margaret Thatcher’s hate-hate relationship with Scotland, failed to reduce the party of the centre-right to this condition.

David Cameron has spotted the problem. Later this month he will bring his shadow cabinet to Scotland in an effort to prove that the original party of union still cares very much for the integrity of the United Kingdom.

I do not doubt his sincerity. But unless it is accompanied by a ruthless clean-out of the Scottish Conservative ranks at Holyrood and a manifesto commitment to reduce the scale, waste and pretension of devolved power, it will be futile.

Only by condemning the dull, parochial ineptitude of devolved politics and promising no future complicity with its excesses can the Scottish Conservatives survive as a credible political force. The party’s MSPs must recognise they were not elected to endorse stumbling efforts at government by Holyrood’s dominant clique of parochial social democrats. Their purpose is to promote an alternative vision of small government, real devolution to local communities and palpable backing for enterprise.

Without Stirling’s initiative, the Scottish Conservatives looked set to be reduced from 17 MSPs at Holyrood to 15 or fewer. His intervention may reduce that negligible tally still further and leave the centre-right voice in Scottish politics shattered, irrelevant and virtually inaudible.

When the SDP was launched it was far from inevitable that Labour would survive. The left had to undergo an agonising growing-up process before it could be trusted to form a government. It took 16 years. The Scottish Conservatives have less than five months. If Cameron hesitates to impose the ruthless and immediate surgery his party needs, the Scottish Democrats may earn a place in history. Stirling’s millions are not enough to buy him power, but they are more than adequate to deliver the coup de grâce to Scottish Conservatism. The residual hope must be that his intervention proves sufficient to stop the Tartan Tories persisting with their apparent determination to commit suicide by inertia.

Comments

Interesting that Mr Luckhurst uses the term 'Tartan Tories' to refer to the Scottish Conservatives.

Previously, the term was used to refer (abusively) to the SNP, particularly in the 1970s. Perhaps Mr Luckhurst has forgotten.

Posted by: Holyrood Watcher | 07 January 2007 at 01:56 PM

How much do you think Archie Stirling's pro-Union emphasis to a centre-right party is in response to the 'fiscal autonomy' if not 'independence' message coming from certain neo-cons (Monteith, Fry, even Murdo Fraser)? Does Stirling smell a centre-right drift to greater autonomy from London than he can contemplate?

Posted by: Grant Thoms | 08 January 2007 at 12:52 PM