With just 24 hours until nominations open in the Scottish Conservative leadership contest, Murdo Fraser has stuck his hand up. That makes six contenders so far to replace outgoing leader Douglas Ross. Fraser has stood for the post before, in 2011, but lost out to Ruth Davidson. Perhaps the pivotal reason for Fraser’s defeat was his radical proposal to scrap the Scottish Tories and set up a new centre-right party separate from the UK Tories but sitting alongside them in government and opposition. The sort of long-running coalition seen between the CSU and the CDU in Germany or the National Party and the Liberals in Australia.
There is no rule that says democracies require power to alternate between centre-left and centre-right parties
There was one problem: Scottish Tory members wouldn’t hear a bar of it. The party could hardly argue that Scottish interests were served by remaining in the Union while declaring that Scottish Tory interests could only be advanced by independence from Westminster.
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