Devolution in Scotland: a work in progress

Anyone see this in the Guardian this last day or two. The leader of the Tories in Scotland has resigned. Well, he’d have to wouldn’t he?

Douglas Ross took the ignominious accolade of becoming what is thought to be the first leader of any party to step down in the middle of a UK general election campaign.

Ross himself admitted on a campaign visit on Tuesday that the events of the past few days had “not been good enough”, responding to a growing backlash from colleagues appalled at his surprise announcement last Thursday that he would run for the Aberdeenshire North and Moray East constituency, replacing the expected candidate, David Duguid.

The highly regarded Duguid is in rehab after a serious spinal injury but had believed he was sufficiently recovered to stand and had been adopted by his local party – before they were overruled by the Scottish Tory management board, of which Ross is a member.

Pretty grim stuff. Talk about climbing over other people. 

But this apparently has merely increased talk in the Tories there about another idea completely. 

But it is an idea from Davidson’s election contest that may yet yield what some believe to be a silver lining: should the Scottish Tories split from the UK party entirely – particularly given its likely rightward tack after its widely anticipated defeat on 4 July – and reform as a new centre-right party more attuned to the Scottish political landscape?

Proposed by Murdo Fraser, the party veteran who stood against her in 2011, and rejected by members at the time, the idea has “never been more pertinent,” says Andy McIver, former Scottish Conservative adviser, podcaster and consultant who helped Fraser hone his pitch.

May be too early:

This mirrors a frustration for some years among the cohort of MSPs and activists brought in by Davidson at the party’s drift since she stepped down – both practically, with Ross focused on Westminster, and politically, prioritising uncreative opposition to independence over a fuller centre-right policy platform. The potential is there; the 38% of Scots who voted for Brexit, for example, still don’t have a strong voice and are not seeking it in Reform either.

While it’s still unclear whether the membership or party machine agree, there’s much more appetite for this conversation among Holyrood Tories, but “this side of the election it is parked”, says a senior source. Likewise, speculation about potential successors and the mechanics of having leadership elections for the UK and Scottish party running in tandem across the summer should Sunak also resign.

But once the idea is there difficult to put it away. 

Granted, there is another part of the current UK that has local parties of the right and right of right, as we know all too well. And they work in tandem, sometimes, with the Tories, and at other times don’t. Moreover the Unionist aspect of the Tories in Scotland is not to be underestimated, as a friend noted to me (and that is true of the LP too). But it is something to keep an eye on, no?

A broader point is that despite the issue of independence seeming to wane, not least due to the travails of the SNP, the dynamics continue to work away in the background. It’s not going away.