The End for the Scottish Conservatives and Unionists?

[afleitch]

Despite 40 odd years of slow decline the idea to hive off the Scottish party into a seperate entity seems to be getting some traction. This thread is really to keep people up to do date on proposals.

Lord Death, Norman Tebbit, clearly lacking something to do has been meeting Scottish business heads and party heads to discuss the transition of the party into a 'Scottish Unionist' centre-right outfit. Which probably means it won't come to much. Despite the fact the anme is used by a smaller, Orangist outfit, the name Unionist as it is currently understood drips too much in sectarian etymology to fly.

It was of course the Devolution Referendum more than the '97 landslide that killed off the Tories. The last vestiges of their 'Scottishness' died that day. Their natural base had been cleved off to the Lib Dems and the SNP (and in some areas to Labour).

In truth, 2007 wasn't too bad for the Tories. Next May will be 'their last chance'

[minionofmidas]

It was of course the Devolution Referendum more than the '97 landslide that killed off the Tories.

You mean it their fruitless opposition to it; or the structure it set up? (Either position makes sense to me, I'm just asking for clarification.)

In truth, 2007 wasn't too bad for the Tories.

Quite.

In the long run, you'll just have to get used to being a third party in Scotland. Which will mean fighting your elections much like the LDs do. To an extent you guys seem to already have grasped that, but only to an extent.
And as a third party, the Scottish Conservatives have a future. Their remnant vote in certain sizable areas (mainly the rural north outside the Highlands Proper; the far south too. The suburbs maybe not so much) is nonnegligible and not going to go away.

[afleitch]

It was of course the Devolution Referendum more than the '97 landslide that killed off the Tories.

You mean it their fruitless opposition to it; or the structure it set up? (Either position makes sense to me, I'm just asking for clarification.)

In truth, 2007 wasn't too bad for the Tories.

Quite.

In the long run, you'll just have to get used to being a third party in Scotland. Which will mean fighting your elections much like the LDs do. To an extent you guys seem to already have grasped that, but only to an extent.
And as a third party, the Scottish Conservatives have a future. Their remnant vote in certain sizable areas (mainly the rural north outside the Highlands Proper; the far south too. The suburbs maybe not so much) is nonnegligible and not going to go away.

I think it was more the business driven campaign than the party opposition to it that caused the most damage to the party. There was certainly a need to have a body opposing it, that's only healthy but the party should not have alligned itself to it. The Scottish Tories 'forgot' about devolution as a concept prior to 1992 and never had a strategy to either oppose it or to accomodate it (with the exception of the pithy attempt to have the Scottish Office take to the road...). It was too focused on partisan local government reform which never worked out how they intended either.

Eventually the London party made the decision for them in dropping opposition to devolution. Likewise it's the London party that made the move on pushing for a Calman like extension of devolution. The Scottish Tories had played about with offering much more than Calman at an earlier stage but shied away from that. That was a miscalculation; Scottish business has (if there were any doubts previously) signed up to devolution and the party would have had tat backing if they grasped the thistle (literally)