Reviving the Scottish Tories

The Irn Lady pulled through – and the Scottish Conservatives survived. Had Murdo Fraser won, he would have renamed the party and left David Cameron running an England-only Conservative party. Yes, I can also imagine how much that would have upset them. But the day has been saved.

The kickboxing Ruth Davidson, committed to reviving rather than abandoning the brand, has triumphed. She already been hailed as the first openly Glaswegian leader of the party, and her supporters argued that Murdo lacked her charisma which is why his proposition was more radical.

I haven’t met either, and can’t comment. Except to say that Scotland remains a very large buffer zone between Cameron and proper control of No10. He actually won a majority of English seats last year and Michael Howard won the most English votes in 2005. Cameron can be forgiven for being exasperated with the Scots, but he needs them – under the current system – to actually win next time. And, of course, there’s the small matter of the independence referendum.

Davidson’s election should give Cameron the chance to start anew on his grandfather’s motherland. The Scottish Conservatives are not even hated anymore – voting for them is now seen as a harmless perversion like cross dressing or cricket. But Davidson, who could have been designed by a committee of A-lister fantasists, may be able to change that. Cameron needs her to succeed more badly than either would admit.

P.S. I was quite taken with Murdo Fraser’s idea of abolishing the Scottish Conservatives, and described the idea in a piece four years ago. Since then, the fortunes of the party have not changed. It’s a sad fact of devolution that the Tory leadership knows (and probably cares) more about the south of France than Scotland.

Holyrood has created a ken’t-yer-faither atmosphere which bores and mystifies Westminster MPs even more than it does Scots. The SNP used to be against devolution, seeing it as a unionist trap designed to lure them into administering Scotland as part of the UK. Salmond worked out that it would loosen the cultural and political ties, creating antagonisms.

It may well be that the union ends due more to English indifference than to Scottish agitation. The Cameroons know Scotland is a major problem, but talk as if they’d be intruding if they tried to solve it. They almost feel like foreigners. And that’s precisely the result the SNP want devolution to achieve.