Scotland has not been kind to the Conservative party for the last few decades, and a candidate for the leadership thinks the solution is to destroy the party in order to save it:
The Scottish Tory party could be scrapped and replaced by a new centre-right party, under radical reform proposals drafted by the favourite to become its next leader.
Murdo Fraser, deputy leader of the Scottish Conservatives, will launch his campaign to head the party on Monday by claiming that its only hope to attract greater popular support would be to split off from the UK party led by David Cameron.
Fraser, a former chairman of the Scottish Young Conservatives, will argue that creating a new Scottish centre-right, tax-cutting party would allow it to build up a fresh political mandate and attract voters disenchanted by the current party, which has failed to recover significantly from 25 years of decline.
After losing every Scottish seat at the 1997 Westminster election, the party now has only one MP at Westminster, David Mundell, the Scotland Office minister. It won just 15 out of 129 seats for the Scottish parliament at the last Holyrood elections and has failed to benefit from the collapse in Liberal Democrat support in Scotland.
