James Cleverly is an accomplished man. He is, outwardly, a good politician, and those who know him tell me he was a good minister, in charge of his brief, about which the same cannot be said for all the contenders for the leadership of the UK Conservative Party. Furthermore, I would not be at all surprised if he emerges from the pack as something of a unity contender, making it into the final two MPs who are put to the membership for election as leader.

However, during leadership elections in which the only constituency is the membership of the party, candidates make some terribly foolish contributions. And this week, Mr Cleverly dropped in a whopper, when he said that the Scottish Tory party can give the SNP and Labour “a trouncing” at the next Scottish Parliament elections, even going so far as to say that the party could return a majority of MSPs, a feat only achieved by Alex Salmond in 2011, and which requires a vote share approaching 50 per cent.

We should forgive Mr Cleverly. No politician should be judged by what they say during a party leadership election, where they are appealing to a particularly small and very unrepresentative cross-section of society. The 7,000 members of the Scottish Conservative party will have nodded their heads with vigour at Mr Cleverly’s Panglossian outlook.

The reality is harsh, though. In last month’s General Election, the party polled less than 13 per cent. It is highly likely to be in third place, behind two parties of the centre-left and with a vote share in the teens, in May 2026, just as it was in May 1999.

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Mr Cleverly would, no doubt, look at the elections of 2016 and 2017 under Ruth Davidson and see them as examples of what could be. Sadly, though, the nuance of those results is often lost.

Baroness Davidson was an outstanding leader, and in charge of a different party could well have grabbed those keys to Bute House, but she polled in the teens for a full four years after taking over as leader, including a return of less than 15 per cent in the 2015 General Election. It was only after that SNP landslide, which put the prospect of a second independence referendum very firmly on the table, and the simultaneous rise of Jeremy Corbyn, who was agnostic on the UK Union, that the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party found a niche.

Labour voters flocked to the party best placed to protect the Union. And they stayed long after Baroness Davidson had gone, with Jackson Carlaw commanding 25 per cent of the vote in 2019, and Douglas Ross holding 31 seats in 2021.

These outcomes were not dependent on the leader; they were dependent on the potency of unionism, and with independence off the table the same Mr Ross dropped 10 per cent of his vote share in last month’s General Election. This is not a positive message to offer the six contenders for the Scottish Tory crown, however all the political and psephological evidence suggests the identity of the next leader will make no difference whatsoever to the result achieved by the party in 18 months time.

Nonetheless, that is not to say the contest is not important. It is. And although I would concede my great disappointment that Murdo Fraser has ruled out the prospect of replacing the Tories with a new centre-right party, something which I consider to be a precondition to the centre-right being in government in Scotland, it does not mean that the current party has no role to play.

Indeed, following the dismal fiscal news emerging from the Scottish Government this week, Scotland has arguably never needed the centre-right more than it does right now.

So, it is all the more dispiriting that we appear to be witnessing one of the most disreputable and tawdry leadership contests that this, or any other party, has ever seen.

I have, in one form or other, been heavily involved with the Scottish Tory party and Scotland’s centre-right for well over two decades. Truth be told, there is much darkness in this outfit. It is run by a very small gang; a handful of mafioso deciding who lives and who dies, politically.

Invariably they get what they want, and they destroy what they don’t want. This was brutally exposed in 2020 when they removed Mr Carlaw from office and replaced him with Mr Ross. It was not what either man wanted (Mr Carlaw wanted to remain leader and Mr Ross wanted to remain at Westminster), but it is what the gang wanted, so it is what they got.

I felt sorry then for both Mr Carlaw and Mr Ross, both of whom I like and respect, and I similarly feel sorry now for Russell Findlay. Mr Findlay is an excellent advert for Scotland’s centre-right and clearly had potential from the moment he stepped into Holyrood, but the truth is that the powers in the shadows had decided he should be the next leader long before he came to that conclusion himself. The transition plan is significantly older than this leadership contest.

Murdo FraserMurdo Fraser (Image: PA)

And, on the other side of the coin, political retribution for Mr Findlay’s fellow contenders has been swift and brutal. Other candidates, privately and publicly, have cited intimidation and a feeling that the party has stacked the odds against them. Mr Fraser, seen by the party as the most credible threat to Mr Findlay, has faced a daily punishment beating in the press from various party outriders. You can do anything, but never go against the family, as Michael Corleone said.

Mr Findlay did not ask for this, nor did he cause it. However the advice I would impart upon him, as I would on any of the six candidates should they emerge from next month’s vote as leader, is to get rid of the mafia.

Otherwise, they will find themselves, like their predecessors, in office but not in power. If this vulgar contest has an upside, it must be that the new leader takes control, and attempts to turn this party into the centre-right force which the country so badly needs.

 Andy Maciver is a former head of communications for the Scottish Conservatives