Face Facts David, The Tories Are Over

THERE can be no greater humiliation in politics than having your enemies leap to your defence. Last week, after it emerged that Scottish Enterprise (SE) had plotted against the Scottish Tories, a veritable Mexican wave of the Conservatives' erstwhile enemies stood up for them.

Labour minister Iain Gray launched an immediate inquiry into SE and carpeted its chief executive Robert Crawford. The SNP's Alex Neil pronounced it disgraceful. I mean, how dare the sand-kicking bullies of SE pick on the poor wee Tories! Something should be done.

Of course, this eagerness to stand up for the little guy was not entirely altruistic. There's no better way of showing how little you fear your enemy than offering to protect them. The SNP's Andrew Wilson scolded the Scottish Enterprise officials for engaging in "a needless political spat with a fringe political party". For the party of George Younger, Malcolm Rifkind, Ian Lang, Michael Forsyth to be patronised by the Nats was the final insult. That the great Conservative Party should be reduced to this.

Actually, it would be pretty difficult for the Scottish Tories' real enemies to give them a proper kicking right now. They'd have to get past the queue of the Conservatives' nominal friends trying to get the boot in. There was Nick Johnstone, the former Tory MSP, last week attacking his leader David McLetchie for failing to "dispel the aura of stagnation and cronyism that disgusts the public". Easy to dismiss as the rantings of a has-been politician, perhaps. Not so easy to parry are the blows that have come from The Scotsman.

After The Jocksman was taken over by its right-wing editor-in- chief (now "publisher"), Andrew Neil, six years ago, the Conservatives hoped that they had finally found a friend in the Scottish media. They have been cruelly disabused. The Scotsman has become one of the Tories' sternest critics. Hardly a day goes by but there is an attack on the failure of the Scottish Conservatives to capitalise on Labour's difficulties over the economy, education, the politicisation of the civil service or whatever happens to be on the front pages.

Scotsman columnist Bill Jamieson berated David McLetchie for failing to offer a credible low-tax, high-growth alternative to the Labour-led Scottish Executive. There's only one solution to the crisis of the Scottish Tories, he concluded: "A new party."

This provoked a furious response from David McLetchie. Clearly deeply hurt by this attack from within the family, McLetchie accused The Scotsman of wilful distortion of the Tory record. He rehearsed the Tories' greatest hits from Holyrood: fox-hunting, smacking, Section 28, Mike Watson's collective cabinet irresponsibility. In an article in The Scotsman's own opinion page, McLetchie concluded that Jamieson's piece "said more about him and his agenda than us".

That agenda would appear to be the idea of a new business party for Scotland, which has been floated in the pages of The Scotsman over the past few months. It is scarcely surprising if the Tories are feeling a little got at if their favourite paper is trying to bring about the birth of a rival. However, this new dynamic business party would appear to be largely a figment of the editorial imagination, for there have been no recorded sightings of it. With only nine months to go until the Scottish parliamentary elections, it's getting a bit late now to outflank the Tories on the right.

However, there is palpable frustration across the political right that the Conservatives, who after all are the quintessential party of business, should be failing to mount the business case effectively in state-dominated Scotland. Of course, they do mount it all the time. The Scottish Tories argue endlessly that business rates and bureaucracy need to be cut, along with quangos and council taxes. But it hasn't been getting across. This is because it's not a truly political message, with appeal outside the narrow constituency of businesspeople. It's not enough just to say what business wants; you have to persuade voters that what business wants is what they need.

Perhaps the problem is more one of style than substance. Rightly or wrongly, people still tend to think of the Scottish Tory party as filled with old-fashioned, old-money toffs like Ian Lang, George Younger and Lord James Douglas-Hamilton. The new money, smart- society entrepreneurial types all seem to be associated with New Labour. It is perhaps a reflection of the Tories' failure that when Wendy Alexander - who alone in Labour did convincingly talk the entrepreneurial talk - finally jumped ship, the Conservatives didn't immediately capitalise on it.

Of course it's not just a matter of perception. Policy is part of the Tory predicament. We have simply heard too much vague and confusing talk - mainly, it has to be said, in the pages of The Scotsman - about the Tories "turning" to fiscal autonomy, or the tartan tax, or PR. None of these are Conservative policy and will not be until well after the election, if ever.

All this speculation does is draw attention to the lack of distinctive policies coming from the Tories. Of course, they have an instinctive feel for populist issues, like smacking bans, public breast-feeding, and homosexuality in schools, but the Scottish Conservatives haven't managed to make it onto the high ground of intelligent, innovative policy. They are still behaving as if they were the stupid party, even though they manifestly possess rather more grey matter, head for head, than Labour.

It all goes back to the Scotland debate. The Tories made a fatal mistake when they failed to modernise after the devolution referendum. The 1997 election was a cataclysmic defeat for them, and it should have been their Year Zero. Staying the same was not an option. They accepted the new constitutional settlement with good grace - well, almost. But the Scottish Conservatives needed to do more than just say sorry.

The Tories stagger under a mountain of image problems deriving from the pre-devolution years. To many voters they're still Thatcher's party, the English party; they're uncaring, they talk funny, and they're only interested in the rich and people who own Highland estates. This image is of course out of date - Brian Monteith is no toff. But you have to address an image problem at its source.

The Tories needed an entirely new brand. They could have renamed themselves something like The People's Party and severed the organisation link with the English Tories altogether. It needed to be as drastic as that. They needed to convince Scotland that they were no longer the same party.

McLetchie's performance in Holyrood has in many ways been exemplary. It is one of the great ironies of devolution that the party which opposed the Scottish parliament has rediscovered itself through participating in it. They have repeatedly exposed the intellectual sloppiness and sloganeering of Labour and shown the importance in democratic politics of being able to mount a coherent case for legislation. They have forced all the parties to raise their game in debate. They drove Henry McLeish from office and exposed the networks of cronyism that bind together the Labour local state and strangle initiative. This is no small achievement.

The Tories are capable of independent thinking, and no doubt would be able to develop distinctive policies. But so long as the people of Scotland see them as "the same old bloody Tories" they will never get a fair hearing. They could have Churchill himself leading them and it would make little difference at election time. Tory is still a four letter word in Scotland; it's time the Tories stopped using it.

Copyright 2002
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