Tories are entertainingly ruthless even when the prize doesn’t matter

The best, most attractive, most compelling candidate to lead the Scottish Tories is an MSP who is neither available nor willing to take on one of Scottish politics’ more thankless tasks. There is a good reason for that, because she has one unacceptable idea. And so we must accept, alas, that poor Kate Forbes will never lead the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party.
If it weren’t for her stubborn enthusiasm for independence, though, you can easily imagine Forbes as a significant upgrade on the options that will be put before Tory members next month. Unfortunately the national question does matter and this regrettable, if tiny, flaw disqualifies Forbes even though there are plenty of Conservative voters across Scotland who might otherwise take the view that she is the Some Like It Hot candidate. As Jack Lemmon says, “nobody’s perfect”, and in plenty of other respects Forbes fits the bill. She is young and affable, and more open-minded than her internal critics within the SNP allow. It helps that, unlike some of them, she believes in a dynamic economy, public sector reform, and, for that matter, God. A good number of Tory voters across Scotland cast a wistful gaze upon Forbes and think, “If only …”
Second-best will have to do, then, and we cannot complain that the Scottish Tories have not been putting on a show. There’s no bitching like Tory bitching, and this contest has shown that the Conservatives have not lost their appetite and aptitude for blue-on-blue ultra-violence. Being time-honoured, this is also reassuring.
Douglas Ross, we may recall, became leader after a putsch against Jackson Carlaw. Ross in turn was heaved out by his colleagues after his own decision to knife David Duguid in his hospital bed and run — unsuccessfully, as it turned out — for election to the House of Commons as the prospective member for Aberdeenshire North & Moray East. Ross’s allies were then accused of trying to fix the leadership contest on behalf of Russell Findlay, the party’s justice spokesman, said to have been identified by Ross a year ago as his preferred successor.
So far, so entertaining, but there is more. Everyone in the Tory party deplores the baleful influence of the “party establishment” but, when asked, no one can identify who these shadowy figures are. The men and women in grey kilts are a mystery. Thus, Meghan Gallacher, until recently the party’s deputy leader, who now promises to “investigate” Ross’s actions, is not a part of the establishment. And neither, it turns out, is Murdo Fraser, even though old Murdo has been at the forefront of Scottish Tory politics for almost a quarter of a century.
Having deplored how party chiefs have curtailed the leadership contest — ballots go to members on September 4 and the results will be announced a fortnight later — Fraser now suggests that there shouldn’t be a contest at all. It is terrible that the establishment wanted to hand the crown to Findlay uncontested but only sensible — for heaven’s sake — for Fraser to demand that all his rivals drop out, recognising him as the undisputed guardian of Tory fortunes north of the wall.
The chutzpah does not stop there. Three of the initial six candidates — Brian Whittle, Liam Kerr, and Jamie Greene — abandoned their campaigns and endorsed Fraser with what seemed, frankly, suspicious haste. Veteran rat-sniffers sensed a rodent and, sure enough, it has now transpired that these were, at best, half-hearted candidacies and, quite possibly, fronts for Fraser’s own ambitions.
Not for the first time, there is the hint that Fraser is too clever — or, rather, too cunning — for his own good. Try this on for size: “I deplore the party establishment’s attempt to stitch-up the contest; now behold my Potemkin campaigns.” Perhaps Stephen Kerr had it right when he muttered that Fraser was running an “awful” campaign. Kerr, it should be noted, is one of Fraser’s supporters.
Though Gallacher is still a runner she has hitherto attracted support from only two MSPs. It seems likely that she is the third wheel. A nice wheel, doubtless, but not a winning one. That leaves the field open to Fraser and Findlay.
Here we might suggest that Fraser has the higher floor but Findlay may have the greater ceiling. That is to say, Fraser is a known commodity and his roots in the party are deep and unquestioned. Findlay offers novelty, but even many of his friends were surprised to discover that he is a Tory. Findlay’s worst is likely to be worse than Fraser’s but he might, just might, hit heights Fraser cannot.
Despite that, Fraser’s campaign seems both more ambitious and more erratic than his rival’s. Undecided MSPs fret that Fraser makes too many mistakes — he would have beaten Ruth Davidson in 2011 had he not proposed sending the party to Dignitas — but they also worry that Findlay is too much of an unknown quantity.
The spite and intramural squabbling that has characterised the campaign might be considered confirmation that the pettiness of a campaign is inversely proportional to the stakes involved and the value of the prize. It is certainly tempting to think so. But viewed dispassionately, this is still a significant race. The Conservatives remain the second largest party at Holyrood and the only one, more importantly, of the centre-right. They may have won a pitiful 14 per cent of the vote last month but everyone agrees that centre-right ideas are more popular in Scotland than Scotland’s centre-right politicians.
Those ideas need a champion and the parliament needs a centre-right party that can articulate an alternative to the costly, soft-of-heart-and-head centre-left consensus that has prevailed at Holyrood for a quarter of a century. This is a question of balance and, fundamentally, of keeping the left at least vaguely honest in an intellectual sense.
It is also a challenge, though, for a Conservative party that has won — for the time being, anyway — its great cause, and consequently been stripped of its defining purpose. The national question has been answered for the time being and the Tories are already missing it. Without the threat of independence, a new question arises: what are the Tories for? Fraser and Findlay both know this is the question that counts, even if neither of them has yet answered it. The time for doing so, for providing that kind of answer, is now.