Murdo Fraser has made an eye catching bid to become Scottish Conservative leader arguing the party led by him can appeal to former SNP and independence supporters.

The long serving MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife officially launches his campaign in Perth today to succeed Douglas Ross who announced his resignation during the general election campaign.

His is a rather audacious pitch and echoes the one made by Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar - indeed very successfully - to persuade disillusioned SNP and pro independence voters to back his party.

Mr Sarwar repeated throughout the election campaign that while this group of Scots may not agree with his party on Scotland's constitutional "destination" they did currently share a common ground in wishing to remove the Conservatives from power in Downing Street. The message proved effective with tens of thousands of SNP voters shifting to Labour on July 4.

READ MORE: Fraser launches leadership bid with appeal to SNP voters

But can Mr Fraser hope for similar success?

Andy Maciver, a former communications head of the Scottish Conservatives, who ran Mr Fraser’s 2011 leadership campaign, said the message by the Tory leadership hopeful made absolute sense.

"It's a pitch which has complete logic behind it because if the Tories are going to be in a position of power in Scotland they have to harness all the votes of the centre right - whether those votes are pro independence or not. There are just not enough centre right votes to go around if you don't hijack some who used to vote SNP," he said.

Is it realistic though? Pollster Mark Diffley is doubtful. 

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His analysis of where former SNP supporters chose to put their marks on their ballot papers on July 4 found that only 2% of voters who backed the party in 2019 switched to the Tories, while 22% of this group of voters moved to Labour.

"This would be a much more difficult task for the Conservatives than it was for Labour who were appealing to many former voters to come back to them," he said.

But Mr Mciver is more optimistic though about Mr Fraser's ambitions pointing out there is a group of voters in Scotland who have supported the SNP and independence but would not regard themselves as supporting centre left values.

One only has to think of debates inside the SNP around relationship with business, income tax policy and the transition away from oil and gas and the attacks by SNP MSP Fergus Ewing on the Greens to realise the breath of opinion inside the party on such issues.

"I think it is fair to say with the independence issue effectively off the table, there is an opportunity to attract SNP voters to the Conservatives based on something other than the constitution," Mr Maciver told us.

"The obvious pitch to those voters if they are centre right voters is to say to them 'well you've gone to Labour in the general election but actually all you're doing is to switch to another party of the left.

"And if you are a centre right voter that doesn't make sense."