It was revealed today that there is to be a new political party on the scene to fight the 2007 Scottish Parliament elections.
The new party, Scotland's Voice, is being funded and set-up by Archie Stirling a millionaire Scottish businessman who is laird of the Keir estate in Perthshire. The 63 year old claims he wants to improve the standards in Scottish politics, however it seems that he is really just a disillusioned Tory.
Stirling's main declared purpose is to save the Union which he believes other parties are incapable of doing. It seems that he believes that Annabel Goldie is incompetent and that David Cameron's brand of Conservatism is just a bit too mushy for him.
Basically it looks as though Stirling is a typical rich old Tory duffer who is fed up with the state of the party in Scotland and thinks his money will make a difference. Sadly, I suspect he is more representative of the small percentage of people who currently vote Tory in Scotland than those that the Tories need to gain to make any headway. He is ardent unionist and wants a return to "red blooded" issues.
Despite the large amount of air time he was given on Radio Scotland this morning, I would safely predict that like Jimmy Goldsmith's Referendum Party he will go absolutely nowhere and probably won't even make much of a dent in the Tories already declining share of the vote in Scotland.
In fact, Scotland's Voice sounds very much like the Scottish People's Alliance which formed for the 2003 election. They even managed to get two disaffected Tories to join their ranks (Lyndsay McIntosh and Keith Harding who had both been demoted in the regional list rankings). And how well did the SPA do? Well they got about 0.4% of the vote!!!!
