Want Douglas Ross’s job? Start a party of your own

If my reaction to these rumours was to be summarised in an emoji, it would be the eye-roll. Because the question for both apparent contenders is: what exactly are you trying to achieve? What piece of evidence, what data, what series of events makes you think you can do any better?

It has become rather a pitiful feature of the Tory Party that they seem unable to fully understand themselves or their position. One of the great misunderstandings of Tory politics in Scotland is that the party was "detoxified" by Ruth Davidson. Not only did Ms Davidson not detoxify the Tory Party, she did not even attempt to do so. Try to find a leaflet from the 2016 Scottish election campaign with "Conservative" plastered all over it, and you’ll be looking for a while.

Instead, Ms Davidson used her formidable political abilities (she is, for sure, the most electable Tory leader of the devolved age) to sell herself as unionist-in-chief in the wake of the 2014 independence referendum. She saw the opportunity, and she grabbed it with both hands. This is to her credit, and we should not underestimate her achievement (she doubled her party’s MSP group and effectively held the balance of power after the 2017 Westminster election), but nor should we pretend that she pulled the phoenix from the ashes.

In the real world, the Tory Party has sat on a base level of support of something between one-in-six to one-in-seven people for the entirety of the 23 years of devolution. This is how many Conservatives there are in Scotland. The additional voters persuaded to cross the blue box over the last six years are not new believers in Conservatism; instead they are committed unionists who selected the party they thought best placed to resist the threat of a second independence referendum.

Understanding that truism makes the opinion polls of the last couple of weeks extremely easy to understand. Unionists used to think that the Tories were the safest bet on protecting the Union, so the Tories used to regularly poll 25 per cent. Now they think it’s Labour, so the Tories have handed over 10 per cent and find themselves back at home base, on 15 per cent. Their vote share 10 years ago, before the independence referendum? Fourteen per cent.

So, if the contenders think that by sheer force of political personality they can take the Scottish Conservative Party to nirvana, they are living in the world of fairies and unicorns.

Nonetheless, that may not be what is on the minds of these contenders. They may understand the trends. They may understand themselves. They may have spotted the gap.

Scotland has a substantial gap in its political market.

The Conservative Party is, in its DNA, opposed to decentralisation. This is why it must be dragged, kicking and screaming, into any new or expanded devolution. That is fine. That is legitimate. There is a place in Scottish politics for a devo-sceptic, centralist, Westminster-focused party. However small, there is a group of voters who would like this position to be represented.

However, there is a much larger group of voters who are currently without representation, but whose view is much more attuned to the devolved era. They are voters from the centre or centre-right, who want decisions to be made closer to them, whether that be by devolving power from London to Edinburgh, or from Edinburgh to the nation’s other cities, towns and communities.

They would not describe themselves as nationalists, but they most likely would not describe themselves as unionists either. They are comfortable with their Britishness, but they take a "Scotland-first" approach, because they live here, not there.

They do not necessarily love the UK, but they don’t want to leave it either. If either of the apparent contenders want to make any kind of lasting impression, they shouldn’t be trying to take Mr Ross’s job. Instead, they should be handing in their resignations to Mr Ross, and starting a party of their own, to service this much larger proportion of the population.

This would be a more progressive party for Scotland’s centre-right, which is currently belted into a vehicle which is not capable of reaching its destination. And it would also be a party which could reach across the divide to help us break the vicious constitutional cycle in which we find ourselves.

Scotland is dominated by two governments – in Edinburgh and London – who insist on an approach which, in reality, relatively few people want. The London government refuses to countenance a second referendum ad infinitum, a stance which records minimal support in opinion polls. The Edinburgh government, similarly, insists on a referendum within the year, which also attracts support from a fairly small proportion of Scotland’s people.

A new party, which understands that Scotland is stuck in treacle and reaches across the aisle for help to pull it out, would rather quickly be more successful than the Conservatives.

This is a time for people to stand up. A time for politicians from all parties, from all ideologies, from all constitutional positions to admit that this is not working. To admit that Scotland is slowly eating itself and needs to be rescued from its own worst instincts.

Scotland is diminishing. We have MSPs who are capable of taking us in a different direction. To those amongst them who are eyeing Mr Ross’s job, I would simply say: don’t bother. It’s not worth it. Get your own instead.

Andy Maciver is Founding Director of Message Matters and Zero Matters

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