From Glasgow to the Highlands, the Scottish Conservatives are back

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.