Blue Scotland: the rise of the Tories

The Tories are back in Scotland. Craig Meighan explores why

In 2016 the Scottish Conservatives bloomed like a flower, winning 32 seats in the Scottish Parliament, shoving Labour aside to become Scotland’s second largest party. To many, this was less a flower, but more of a weed or a thorn; an unprecedented locust spreading pervasively throughout a garden rarely seen so blue. In 2017 they continued to grow, returning 13 Scottish MPs in the UK general election in their best performance since 1983. The party previously had only one Scottish MP since 1997. But with the Scottish political tides turning the Tories in Scotland are in the best shape  they’ve been in for decades.

In the 2016 Scottish Parliament election the Tories accepted that the SNP would be the next party of government, so they ran on being a strong opposition and being the party that would prevent the SNP’s goal of a 2^nd independence referendum – what the Tories described as unwanted and unnecessary. With Labour seen as weak on the issue of independence and experiencing leadership issues voters sought refuge within the Tory party; a party many saw as the only party confidently speaking up for the union. This led to a tsunami of voters who had never voted Tory before.

“I think they’ve successfully capitalised on the post-referendum division. Scottish politics is pretty binary now: you’re either a unionist or a nationalist. The referendum result was 55/45, so you’ve got 55% of unionists in play that could potentially vote Conservative… I think they’ve probably been helped by the fact that the 2^nd referendum has been on the agenda… they’ve utilised that tactically very well at each of the last year’s elections. That’s definitely one factor,” said Dr Neil McGarvey, a social scientist and lecturer at Strathclyde University.

Scottish Tory Leader Ruth Davidson

Dr Alan Convery, an expert on the Scottish Conservatives agrees that the party successfully utilised the independence issue: “The Conservatives specifically targeted people who cared about the union and who…were receptive to voting Tory at an ideological level. And then they used Ruth Davidson. Some people describe Ruth Davidson as a gateway drug to voting Tory. So, they were ideologically predisposed already, but using Ruth Davidson as someone who is not a typical Conservative gave them permission almost to vote Conservative.”

Convery also described a “cultural barrier” many Scots face in voting Tory, but said the Conservatives used “Ruth to show that you can get over that cultural barrier because she’s not like the other Conservatives.”

In a comment most Conservatives would be eager to confirm, Convery said: “It’s hard to become more unionist than the Scottish Conservatives.”                                                                                                                                             

Annie Wells

Annie Wells is another example of a leading Scottish Tory helping the party break down cultural barriers. She voted Labour all her life – until she voted for herself as a Conservative candidate in the 2016 Scottish Parliament election. Now a Glasgow regional MSP in Holyrood, she states her interest in politics starting with the independence referendum and her opposition to it. Like many Scots who didn’t want to see their country leave the UK, Wells saw the Tories as the party against independence. Wells explains how she views the Scottish Tories differently from the UK Tories.

“I think when you look at Ruth Davidson and the sort of background she came from and way Ruth is, she's from a working-class background. I think when I look at the UK Tories I see guys with grey hair and pinstriped suits. You don't see people like me or Thomas [Kerr] or Ruth prominent in the party down there.

45% of Tory MPs are privately-educated

“And we've seen before in the press it's the Eton Boys and The Bullingdon Club. We are different. We have a very broad range of MSPs up here. We've got a sir, we’ve got a laird, we've got me. So, it is very different.”

The Tories are keen to use Wells as a symbol of how the party has changed. Wells, along with Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, are openly gay women (and in Davidson’s case a relatively young women) in a party historically run by middle-aged, upper-class men, and responsible for Section 28 (a bill in the 80s to stop the “promotion of homosexuality”). But the party’s representation of women in the Scottish parliament is a pitiful 19% and they have but one female MP. If the face of Tories is perceived to be changing it will have more to do with Davidson and Wells being prominent figures than what the facts actually bare out.

  

But there is no doubt the charisma and likeability of Ruth Davidson has greatly aided in advancing the party from 15 to 31 MSPs in the Scottish Parliament.  A YouGov poll in January saw Davidson as the most popular political leader in Scotland with a net approval of +15%, far outreaching Nicola Sturgeon at a 0% approval rating.

  

“[The Scottish Conservatives] have a leader who is not a typical Conservative but seems like someone who is counter-culturally Conservative: she is openly gay, she was a former journalist, so she’s good on media; she comes across as quite personable. She’s come to talk to my class and students are already very impressed with how down to earth she is,” said Convery.

The party’s leadership sent a message: not all Tories are privately-educated, silver-spooned, upper-class men. That may have been an important signal for some Scottish voters who often see the UK Tories as privileged and out-of-touch; sitting comfortably in their ivory towers telling the poor to get a better job. Davidson sent another message: that the Tories could be the party for Scotland – if your idea of Scotland is one in the union.

  

McGarvey agrees that Davidson is viewed differently from her predecessors: “She’s not your lawyer David McLetchie, she’s not your Annabel Goldie…She’s LGBTI… she seems normal. She’s not a Tory toff telling you, in a paternalistic way, what’s going on.”

  

Thomas Kerr is working-class Tory who shocked Scotland when he won a local councillor seat in Glasgow east-end’s Shettleston ward. A ward that ranks poorly on all metrics in Scotland, including education, health and crime. A few years ago, it was reported that the area had a life expectancy lower than that of war-torn Iraq. In 2016 the-then 20-year-old from Cranhill, who was raised by parents addicted to heroin, seemed like an unlikely Tory candidate – and an even more unlikely winner. In his ward, he came 2^nd only to Labour heavyweight and former Leader of Glasgow City Council, Frank McAveety. Kerr credits part of the successes of his party to the demise of Labour.

Shettleston Councillor Thomas Kerr

 

“The problem with Labour and the reason why Labour is in such a bad state right now – and in Scotland in particular – is because nobody quite understands what they stand for. Are they pro-union? Are they anti-union? Are they going to let Yes campaigners become councillors? Are they not? It’s flip-floppy all over the place and that’s why people like in politics to know exactly what they stand for,” Kerr said.

  

Kerr explains how Labour’s confusing position on independence helped the Tory party take the position as Scotland’s principle unionist party.

  

“[The Conservatives] can campaign and say if you want a pro-union party that’s low tax and is going to stand up for hard-working people, vote Conservative. If you want an independence party that’s going to stand up for more taxes vote SNP. That’s how polarising politics has become. The problem that Labour has is that they’re not cutting through in Scottish politics” Kerr said.

 

Since devolution, the Scottish Labour Party has had nine leaders - more than the SNP and Tories combined. This led to instability within the party and an electorate who didn’t quite understand where Labour stood on many important issues. In the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, Labour campaigned aside the Conservatives which led to the tag: ‘red Tory’, an association that tainted the Scottish Labour Party with a perception they are just like their enemies, thawing the veneer of the party’s credibility as the home of the working class. Their alliance with the Tories against independence, while 2/3^rds of Scottish Labour voters favoured independence, only hurried the party’s downfall.

Jim Murphy, the-then Labour leader famously
 lost his seat to the SNP in 2015

 

Labour found itself in an unfortunate position neither the SNP nor the Conservatives experienced: their voters were conflicted. This led to two camps within Scotland: pro-independence and pro-union. These two camps had seemingly suitable, or at least outspoken, homes fighting for their cause. Labour’s home was one seemingly of confusion and turmoil, failing to draw voters in which eventually led to the loss of 13 MSPs.

  

“People were going from Labour to Conservative... [Labour was] arguing about its leadership and sometimes striking a somewhat uncertain note about the independence question. Sometimes Labour just sounded like: ‘Can we just talk about anything else? We’ll talk about schools or hospitals or policeman, but please can we not talk about independence?’ They were struggling with this issue partly because they knew their voters were internally divided,’ said Professor Sir John Curtice, Britain’s leading election expert.

  

“[Parties] need to have a narrative, i.e. you need to have a story of the kind of government you want to be and the kind of country you want to create to persuade people you can deliver it. Policy matters insofar as it helps you to sustain a narrative in which people begin to have faith and which suggests that you would actually be capable of delivering it. That’s how it matters. The broad synoptic you’re sending out, for the most part, voters won’t follow the detail. It’s the broad messages they follow.

  

“I would take the view that the reason why the Labour Party got into so much trouble as it did was because it never developed a narrative of the kind of Scotland it wanted to create,” Curtice said.

A minority of Scots voted to leave the EU

In the 2017 general election, however, Curtice points out that the success of the Tories has more to do with a referendum that isn’t Scottish independence: Brexit.

 

 “The 29% vote that [the Tories] got in the general election in 2017, that was the product of gaining votes among Leave voters. So, despite Ruth Davidson’s personal position, the dynamics of the increase in Conservative support in that period is very similar to that of the party south the border. They just simply gained votes among Leave voters. This means, for example, that something like 8% of those people who voted SNP in 2015 voted for the Conservative because they were Leave voters. The rise in Conservative support between 2016-2017 is just as high among Yes voters as it is among No voters,” said Curtice. 

 

“This point 12 months ago it looked possible that the Scottish Conservative Party would manage to become not just a unionist party, but the unionist party,” Curtice said.

But when asked what the narrative for a Tory Scotland is, Dr Convery said: “They don’t have one.” 

And this remains the biggest issue facing the future of the Scottish Conservatives: what now? What if the threat of a 2^nd independence referendum goes away? Davidson herself admitted many votes may have been borrowed from other parties. What if Brexit is a disaster? What then for the Leave supporters who voted Tory?

  

Their manifesto in 2016 was very policy-light and many of the main policies proposed, such as more college places or scrapping the named person scheme aren’t distinctively centre-right or Tory and could easily be adopted by left-leaning parties.

Many Tory policies remain deeply unpopular in Scotland, such as lowering the top 50p tax rate or the so-called “rape clause”. To continue to rise, the Scottish Conservatives must be more than just a pro-union party. They must have a vision of a Tory Scotland that resonates with voters. Right now they do not. 

And therein lies what could be the Tories’ hamartia: that the party finds its own unique vision of what a Tory Scotland could look like and voters simply reject it.


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