Never trust a Tory

Today Ruth Davidson has written an article for the Guardian entitled 'My fellow Tories, I'm afraid the crash generation just doesn't trust us'.  It's been written on the back of a YouGov poll on behalf of the Centre for Policy Studies which says that

nearly half of 18- to 24-year-olds say that there is zero chance of them ever voting Tory. 

Honestly I'm surprised that it's as high as that, especially as the following sentence says

 Among under-40s as a whole, those who says they are certain to vote Conservative is now less than one in 10.

 So logically it would seem that 18- to 24-year-olds are actually more likely to vote Tory than 25- to 40-year-olds?  She doesn't go into detail on this.

Anyway, not to worry, Ruth is on the case.  She goes on to say

But – after making gains in both the Scottish parliament and Westminster elections in recent years – it’s also something that we know we can change. There are some lessons for the whole party in our experience.

Now there's no denying that there are now more Conservative MPs and MSPs in Scotland than there have been for a generation, so she must be doing something right.  But if we look at the campaigns she ran for the last Holyrood and Westminster elections in Scotland her strategy consisted of 'never mind the policies, we don't want a second independence referendum' and 'vote for the Ruth Davidson party'.    In other words, she appealed to the die-hard Unionists in Scotland and carefully played down any mention of the Conservatives.  It worked for her this time, but one has to think that she has already reached the peak of that particular constituency.

Ruth goes on to say that her success is because

We’ve sought to make an optimistic, positive case about that union

She has?  She kept it very quiet then.  One of the things that Yes supporters have been asking for is a positive case for remaining in the Union, and we don't appear to be any further forward on that score as a result of either of Ruth's campaigns.  Dog-whistles about 'we don't need no stinking second referendum' don't really count as a positive case for anything.

So what's a Scottish Tory leader to do?  Trumpet Conservative values apparently. 

The younger generation, and society at large, is not yearning for a five-year plan of centrally delivered tractor quotas. Instead, we are a society that prizes individual autonomy and freedom of expression, and expects government to help us to achieve our goals, not set them.

Nice dog-whistle in the 'five-year plan' reference, which will quite possibly not work on younger generations, unless they've been studying the history of Soviet Russia.   As for 'prizing individual autonomy and freedom of expression', there's a great big unspoken addendum to that, which is 'as long as you don't expect anything more than lip-service to actual support'.  Tell that to disabled people, whose goals are to live a dignified and happy life, or students from poor backgrounds who don't have family money to rely on to get an education.   Life in Toryland is grand as long as you stand on your own two feet and don't expect any practical support.

Then we get to the meat of the matter.  Ruth is helping to launch a brand new think-tank.

Next week I will help launch Onward, a new think-tank, which will work to offer practical policies to support families across the country, focusing on the under-45s

Focusing on the under-45s presumably because the poll has told them that essentially their natural constituency is older people who have a bad habit of being more likely to die, thus whittling away at Tory support.

The major priorities will be affordable housing and education.  Sounds very laudable.  Who wouldn't want to improve these areas?  But here's the thing, the Tories have been in government at Westminster for a number of years now, and we have a shortage of affordable housing and, in some areas of the UK, the highest student debt ever.  Why should we believe that this time things will change?  Mind you, think-tanks are a perfect way of making it look as if something is being done while changing not very much at all.

I think that Ms Davidson and her cohorts underestimate the younger generation.  They're not stupid, and can see for themselves the utter mess that the current government is making of things. And it's not just the younger generation that don't trust them.

They walk the line

You can't please all of the people all of the time.  All you can do is try to please as many people as possible most of the time.  This principle applies in all sorts of situations in life, and there's often a fine line to be walked.

The history of the Labour party is a good example of this.  It was originally formed out of the trade union movement, with the intention of representing the interests of the working class in politics and fighting for changes that would benefit the working man.  People would vote for it, especially in Scotland, trusting in their representatives to do their best for them.  However, gradually the party began to see working class votes as an entitlement which would enable the political class to get into power/remain in power - a means to an end, if you will.  This has led the the situation where the Labour party in Scotland has no idea how to campaign, because for many years they could rely on the working class voting for them by default without having to have too much in the way of policies to attract them.  Nowadays we hear a repeated cry of 'come home to Labour' aimed at voters in Scotland who are now voting for the SNP.  The Labour party in Scotland has not yet lost its sense of entitlement to votes.

The SNP, the main rivals to Labour in Scotland, would do well to learn from this example.  Following the referendum in 2014 they saw a massive increase in membership, mainly from supporters of independence who see the SNP as the main way in which this goal will be achieved.  Four years on, however, the SNP are in danger of falling into the same trap as Labour.  At branch level they seem to be seeing the massive increase in membership as a resource to be leveraged in order to get the SNP into power at all levels from local councils upwards.  In the process they appear to be losing sight of the bigger picture, the reason why many of the new members joined.

Most of the new members did not join in order to become embroiled in the local minutiae of bus routes, community councils and budgets. They joined in order to fight for Scottish independence and are not particularly interested in schools or waste collections.  There is a danger that, in losing sight of the bigger picture, the SNP leadership risk losing many of their new members, who will be quite happy to move on to some other group if they offer a more direct fight for independence.

The SNP as the Scottish government have concentrated on the past few years in offering decent governance, which is important in demonstrating that there is no reason why Scots can't run their own affairs competently.  However, at the moment the SNP seem to be forgetting their core reason for being, and would do well to bring it back into focus.

There will never be a time when the fight for independence will be without some risk.  No major change has ever come about without it.  The time is fast approaching where the SNP will either have to offer leadership in the struggle for independence or move over to allow other groups to take the lead, in the process becoming just like all the other political parties in Scotland.  Let's hope they opt for the former.