Scottish Conservative Party set to disband?

[T_i_B]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/scottish-politics/8739927/Scottish-Conservative-Party-set-to-disband.html

Dramatic plans to disband the Tories north of the border were unveiled by the front-runner for its leadership in a move one senior party figure warned could encourage the break-up of the United Kingdom.

Mr Cameron– who is spending the weekend in Scotland – faces the prospect of being the first British Prime Minister whose party has no Scottish MPs.

Murdo Fraser, who is favourite to become leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party, will announce that he plans to wind up the party if he wins a ballot of members next month. He would follow disbanding the party by launching a new Right-of-centre party that would contest all Scottish elections — council, Scottish Parliament and Westminster.

Mr Fraser, a member of the Scottish Parliament, believes the Conservatives have become a “toxic brand” in Scotland since losing all 11 of their Commons seats in the 1997 Labour landslide.

[fedsron2us]

1. Quite a big story

The Tories are desperate to reverse their decline in Scotland so some form of rebranding was on the cards. Obviously, the aim is create a viable right of centre party north of the border with which to compete against the Scottish Nationalists and Labour. I suspect the posturing on a referendum on independence is an attempt to get a No vote registered in the hope of killing off the idea for good. Sadly I dont think the idea is likely to go away even if they achieve that goal. Moreover once right of centre right wing voters get a truly national party in Scotalnd I suspect that events will detach it from the Tories in England quite quickly. The ebb tide of history and the fact that Scotland has diverged from the rest of the UK so much in recent years on certain policies such as education, care and health means that some sort of official break from Westminster is more or less inevitable in the next 5 years IMHO.

[non sociopath skin]

2. I agree. The political culture of Scotland - and, increasingly Wales ....

... is beginning to differ radically from that of England. In fact, the point is often made in educational forums that England is increasingly the odd-man-out in the Union on major social issues.

Living in the North of England, as I do, I think that the issue of fragmentation may be deeper than envisaged. Although we define ourselves as "English", our history and traditions are much closer to those of our Celtic cousins and I certainly feel much more at home in Edinburgh or Cardiff than I do in London - or Brighton, even. I certainly can't see us sitting happily in the kind of Tory-dominated rump English statelet that more and more of the right seem to dream of.

Although regional government - thanks largely to the Blairites' damning of it with faint praise - bombed out last time, I suspect there might be a very different reaction after a couple more years of ConDemnation.

The Skin

[tjwmason]

3. This has been slowly bubbling away for a while

I remember it starting when I was at university in Scotland at the very end of the '90s - there was a lot of attention paid to the Bavarian model where the C.S.U. is the local variant of the national C.D.U. (which is mentioned in the article).

I doubt it will have much effect in the short-term, and will only work in the longer term if the new party shows itself to be genuinely different to Mr. Cameron's party down south. As has been noted, the Scottish political scene has been drifting from the London one for a while now.

[dipsydoodle]

4. Scottish Tories may ‘break away’ to ban Dutch referees

Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser has announced he will try to ‘break away’ from the UK party if he wins the leadership election next month – in order to stiffen immigration control on football referees from the Netherlands.

He claims the party carries too much baggage and needs a new centre-right position to attract voters who want to see Dutch officials barred from the country forever.

Mr Fraser explained, “The only way we can possibly get people in Scotland to vote Conservative is to create a progressive party which preserves the identity of honest Scottish football.”

“Right now I think this will be attractive to a lot of people in Scotland who believe that any Dutch referee really doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

http://newsthump.com/2011/09/06/scottish-tories-may-%E2%80%98break-away%E2%80%99-to-ban-dutch-referees/

[LeftishBrit]

5. I wish that Tories everywhere would cease to be a force in politics...

but that is a dream, alas.

[non sociopath skin]

6. Every society has fostered a "Me! Me! Me!" party.

You would think that the "Fair Shares For You Too" party would always appeal to the greater number, but there's nowt so queer as folks.

The Skin

[Nihil]

7. That's been tried more than once too ...

> You would think that the "Fair Shares For You Too" party would always
> appeal to the greater number, but there's nowt so queer as folks.

... but they always seem to be led by "Me!Me!Me!" people in the end ...

:shrug:

[non sociopath skin]

8. A great deal of truth in that, Nihil (sigh)

:banghead:

The Skin