Saturday 3 September 2011

Could Cameron see the death of the Scottish Tories?

According to the Torygraph, David Cameron may be about to do something that not even Margaret Thatcher was able to achieve and kill off the Conservatives in Scotland. This may seem far fetched but it is what Murdo Fraser MSP and one of the possible winners of the leadership contest is proposing.

What Fraser wants is to hold a ballot of members with the proposal to disband the Scottish Conservativies and set up a new right wing party in Scotland. He believes that the Conservative brand is too toxic in Scotland since the wipe out in 1997 under the leadership of John Major.

If Fraser gets his way there will only be three parties that can say to have organisation across the whole of the UK, Labour, the Lib Dems and Greens. However, a lack of a party calling themselves Conservative is nothing new north of the border.

It was only in 1965 that the Conservatives in Scotland started to use the name Conservative, up until that time there were the Scottish Unionist Party. Though until that time the difference between the Scottish Unionist Party and the Conservative Party of England and Wales was had to differentiate, if not invisible when it came to Westminster. Indeed Andrew Bonar Law (1922-23) and Sir Alec Douglas-Home (1963-65) were both part of the separate Scottish Unionist Party but served as Conservative Prime Minister.

Beware of Scottish Conservatives deciding to return to the sheep's clothing of their former lupine appearances north of the border.

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