A Sense of Balance?

A Sense of Balance?

There's been a fair lot of comment in the last few days following the announcement by Tory leadership hopeful Murdo Fraser that he'll disband the Scots Tories and form a new centre-right party should he win the contest to replace Annabel Goldie. A lot of this comment has taken the form of backslapping among the Scottish left, congratulating ourselves on how our nation has sent them hamewards tae think again, how genetically social-democratic we are, and the odd word about Thatcher.

All of which has a certain measure of truth, but I'd be the first to chastise any Nationalist (or any other non-Tory Scot) for complacency. 1997 saw the Tories wiped out in Wales just as in Scotland, now they have 8 Welsh MPs. They had 9 AMs in 1999, now they have 14. Revival can happen, jst as can decline. That's not to say that the Tories are on the cusp if a comeback in Scotland (indeed, all the indications are the other way), but the Tories are people who know a thing or two about power, and we should never let our guard down.

That said, a Tory comeback at the moment does not seem to be on the cards, something which seems to dismay even those Scots who'd rather gouge their eyes out with a rusty spoon than vote Tory. These are folk who are convinced that we need a Tory presence in Scottish politics to provide balance from otherwise lefty tendencies.

I beg to differ.

Seeing healthy numbers of blue, red, green and yellow dots on charts of the parliament's seat distribution may appeal aesthetically, but think about what a Tory presence in our public discourse really means before you lend a sympathetic nod to the idea of “balance”.

The Tories, to be blunt, have been on the wrong side of almost every major debate most people can remember. Privatising industry. Gay rights. Devolution. Iraq. Hunting. Minimum pricing. The Tesco Tax. Land Reform. The Poll Tax. Proportional Representation. The great council house sell-off.

And look what they're getting up to in England – tuition fees through the roof, privatising swathes of the NHS, cutting public services to the bone.

If this is balance, then frankly, it's a balance we don't need. The longer we allow the voice of privilege to shriek in our halls of power, the longer we hold back our nation from true progress.


There's another angle to these calls for “balance” as well. John McTernan, writing over at LabourHame (http://www.labourhame.com/archives/1843), argues that we need more Tories to balance our body politic. Now, far be it from me to suspect that Tony Blair's former advisor, and the man who wrote in the Scotsman during this year's Scottish election that Labour were doing badly because they weren't negative enough, might have some broadly rightist sympathies. I'm sure such could not possibly be the case. No, he argues that Scottish politics needs the Tories so that the workload of attacking the SNP can be shared more equally and realistically among all the opposition parties. One commentator on the article goes further, saying:

“A reformed conservative Party could become a potential coalition partner for Labour, and why not? We have to bury our political differences (which have become smaller and smaller since the nineties) and present a united front to stand up for our Union. Never before in the history of British politics has an alliance been so vital.”

Is this what the Labour party has come to? The Union is now more important than the founding principles of Labour. The issue to be addressed is not the disgraceful fact that there is so little difference between Labour and the Constervatives (openly acknowledged). I could hardly believe what I was reading – the prospect of a Tory free, independent Scotland is something that sends the shivers down this Labourites spine! Living in Britain, shared alternately between the Tories and the rightward-drifting Labour is the best we hope for, so all hands on deck! What we have here is clearly no more about balance, but about desperate alliances to halt the prospect of Scotland going it alone.

This will not do. Whether Scotland does become independent or not in the next few years, the fact is that we are plainly developing a very separate political culture from that subsisting south of the border. As Murdo Fraser has noticed, that culture has little place for the voice of privatisation, cuts and privilege. Whether that voice continues to be represented by the Tory party as currently constituted, or in some other form, Scotland must continue to resist it. We must continue to bring our nation along the path of equality, of land reform, of renewable energy, of autonomy.

Will Murdo Fraser deliver that under any party banner? Awa an gie's peace.