Tim Bale is Senior Lecturer in Politics at Sussex University and his book, The Conservative Party: From Thatcher to Cameron, is due for publication early next year.
Judging from the discussions at a round table on the Scottish Conservatives held recently at the University of Strathclyde there seems to be widespread agreement that, after a difficult few years following the advent of the Scottish Parliament, the Tories are getting their act together. The event that featured contributions from Jackson Carlaw MSP; Andrew Fulton, Chairman of the Scottish Conservative Party; David Torrance, author of We In Scotland – Thatcherism In A Cold Climate; and the academic, Professor James Mitchell. The audience, brought together under the auspices of the UK Political Studies Association’s Conservatives and Conservatism specialist group also made it a lively affair.
There were all sorts of opinions expressed in a wide-ranging discussion, which means that absolutely none of the following should be seen as the product of some kind of consensus. That said, most observers seem to think Annabel Goldie is providing good-humoured, sensible leadership and has brought a degree of stability to a party that, a few years ago anyway, was seen, rightly or wrongly, as a bit of a rabble. She is relatively well-thought-of by the general public and events like the debates over the Scottish Government’s Budget suggest that there are a number of strong performers among the party’s MSPs.
The overall aim, though, has to be for the Scottish Conservatives to be respected as well as liked and to be seen to do well not simply because the party has exceeded low expectations. This applies not only to voters, but to the UK leadership, which according to some reports, still fails to take the party north of the border sufficiently seriously.
Changing all that will also mean the Scottish Conservative Party being seen as an outfit with policies and ideas of its own, rather than one that reacts to the proposals of its more powerful opponents, even if those proposals do sometimes actually borrow from, or at least coincide with, policies which the Tories themselves have suggested or support.
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