Detoxifying Tories means forgetting the present too Ian Bell Columnist Saturday 4 October 2014 Ruth Davidson is David Camerons kind of Tory. She won a standing ovation for her fringe speech at the partys Birmingham conference. She was granted a seat next to the leaders wife while he addressed the faithful. The seal of approval was bestowed on an MSP who came fourth, just, on the Glasgow regional list in 2011. For Mr Cameron, that detail is hardly the point. When you want to claim to have saved the Union, actors and a script are required. If no credit can be allowed to Labour, least of all when you are stitching up that gullible party over solemn vows and devolution promises, you must look to your own local heroine. Ms Davidson is not about to argue. In fact, shell go one better. In her recollection of events, more than the Union was preserved on 18 September. With a No vote, the tomb was cracked open and Scottish Conservatism walked among us once more. Or as Ms Davidson said in Birmingham: The last two years have proved beyond any reasonable doubt that, far from being toxic, it was the Scottish Conservatives who spoke up and stood up for Scotlands silent majority. That is - also beyond reasonable doubt - a bit of a stretch. Ms Davidson seemed to be confusing two million No voters with those who voted Tory at the last Scottish elections. If toxicity is the issue, 276,652 constituency votes and 245,967 regional ballots in 2011 leave a fair bit of territory awaiting decontamination. Besides, Scottish Conservatives have been announcing a return from the afterlife for a very long time. Were still waiting. They are tantalised, for all that, by the old Nixonian notion of the silent majority, that polity slow to anger and slower to act. Conservative Scotland slumbers, so the party likes - or needs - to believe, but awaits its moment. Those canny Scots, as Ms Davidson styles them, are eager for the clarion call of tax cuts and spending cuts. Theyve just been too polite to mention it. Its an old puzzle. Why so reticent? What ails the stout natural Scottish Tory when he or she cannot speak up? Amusingly, some around the party will give you lots of theories about Scotlands left-liberal - no, really - urban consensus, the Thatcher years, and the loss of historic memory. It doesnt explain why the imagined majority refuse to make their marks in the silence of the polling booth. Garlanded with praise in Birmingham, Ms Davidson hopes for better. She has no real choice, after all. Taking credit for a No vote is her best shot until the row over the species of pig in the promised devolution poke becomes properly fierce. Then, of course, she and her colleagues, from Mr Cameron down, will blame Labour. But why that could form the makings of a Scottish Tory revival is a question as mysterious as the nature of the elusive muttering majority. Lets say the Prime Minister does contrive some version of English votes for English laws. How does that help Ms Davidson find a friend, as she has promised, for David Mundell, our sole Tory MP in the happy lands of Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale? You could put it in simple language: does the Scottish Tory leader reckon second-class representation at Westminster is a fair price for the blessings of Union? Will her party say as much at the next UK General Election? How about human rights? Set aside the guddle in which Ms Davidsons new friends from Birmingham find themselves as they try to conflate the EU, the European Convention and the Human Rights Act 1998. Did the Scottish Tory leader not tell Mr Cameron a few rhetorical flourishes involving British courts and British judges ignore the Scotland Act - the one from which she derives her job - entirely? If not, why not? It isnt trivial. The constitutional lawyers are already queuing to tell Mr Camerons ministers that the devolution settlements for Scotland and Northern Ireland cannot be unpicked because London ministers like the look of headlines bashing Europe. The European Human Rights Convention is embedded. Ms Davidsons views on those rights would be appreciated. Her views on what it all means for devolution - a line in the sand, perhaps - are essential. This, though, is the business she has chosen. Every attempt to detoxify the brand, to wipe away the old stains, is a gesture made within the universe of British Conservative politics. The Scottish leader would have us forget the past, but she must also, somehow, persuade us to ignore the present, the one in which Mr Cameron is struggling to fend off Ukip or contain Boris Johnson, the one in which George Osborne is determined to inflict more misery on Scotlands poor, the one in which the claim of human rights is treated as a foreign impertinence. It was us who made the confident, patriotic case for the UK, Ms Davidson boasted to her admirers in Birmingham. A Scotland that wants a truly United Kingdom - one which meets the ambitions of the people of Scotland. The Scotland that wants to see sensible centre-ground policies working for all Scots. All Scots? This week, Ms Davidsons team made a lot of noise over historic poll-tax debts. They made not a sound over a transparent attempt to drive the newly-enfranchised from the voters rolls. They seemed to have no awareness, either, of the history of the community charge, or why it brought their party into lasting and profound disrepute. A quarter of a century ago, given the choice between all Scots and sectional self-interest, the Tories didnt hesitate. Under Ms Davidsons leadership, with Labour for chorus, they are at it again. That, if she is serious about draining the poison from the reputation of Scottish Conservatism, is the challenge for her brave new world. Mr Osbornes next assault on the vulnerable and poor might not aid the revivalist cause much, even among the mythical majority. It will be brutal by design and it will hit Scots hard. Ms Davidson would have us believe a referendum choice has somehow vindicated her hopes for her party, but the sentiment favouring No was fragile enough without the Chancellors efforts to show what life in the UK truly means. Speaking in Birmingham, Ms Davidson used the word toxic to make an odd claim. Scottish Conservatism, she tried to assert, is respectable once again. There need be no inhibition - honest - for those who might fancy a punt on a Tory prospectus. You can see why the young leader of a minority party would try such a gambit. But the problem, of history and the understanding of history, remains. Why did Scotlands Conservatives sink so low? The party has been telling itself consoling tales for decades. The electoral record says only that it was rejected, time and again, when it tried to defend policies designed for another country and another electorate. Scottish Labour is in the same quicksand. But demented rhetoric over Europe, human rights and austerity economics will not return Ms Davidsons mute majority to the Conservative fold any time soon. The old, comical errors are being repeated. heraldscotland/comment/columnists/detoxifying-tories-means-forgetting-the-present-too.25489915
Posted on: Sat, 04 Oct 2014 09:37:20 +0000
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