HOLYROOD COMMENTARY

WELL that's the way it is sometimes in politics. If someone is a bit slow you get people shouting "come on you fat bastard, come on you ginger bastard, come on you Tory bastard". In Scotland, "Tory" is still a term of abuse for many.

Unfortunately, David Cameron can't sack anyone for it. Though he must have been sorely tempted to dump Bill Walker - the senior Scots Tory "dinosaur" who criticised his sacking of his homeland security spokesman, Patrick Mercer, for the allegedly racist remarks paraphrased above.

Cameron's latest foray into Jurassic Park was a disaster. He looked totally out of place among the ancients of the Scottish Tory party. His youthful presence only underlined how marginal Conservatism has become in Scotland.

Cameron's people simply cannot understand how the Tories in England can be 13% ahead, according to ICM, and yet be trailing so badly in Scotland. According to the same polling organisation, they stand to lose three or four Scottish seats in a few weeks' time and will be pushed into fourth place at Holyrood.

It doesn't compute. Why should Scotland be so different? Why are Scots voters immune to Dave's charms?

That was the question the hapless Scottish spokesman, David Mundell MP, was sent away to answer. His now-infamous memo explained that the Scottish Tory MSPs were clueless, and led by a reluctant "Scottish auntie", Annabel Goldie, who lacked "activity and strategic thought".

The attack on Goldie, who is something of a national institution, was particularly unwise. It's hardly her fault the Scottish Tories are a few policies short of a full manifesto.

Apart from a dogged unionism, the Scottish Tories haven't had an original thought in years - since Michael Forsyth was Scottish secretary in 1995-7. Most of his ideas - opted-out schools, foundation hospitals, workfare - have now been pinched by Tony Blair, and the Tories haven't come to terms with that yet.

David Cameron has dealt with it by stealing things back from Labour - environmentalism, compassion, tolerance of sexual minorities. But the Scottish Tories haven't kept up. Theirs is a default Thatcherism. You wouldn't get Goldie hugging hoodies or praising The Guardian's Polly Toynbee.

There is still a whiff of homophobia about the Scottish Conservatives, dating back to the Keep The Clause campaign. There was an audible intake of breath at their conference on Friday when Cameron proposed giving the married couple's allowance to same-sex couples.

What Cameron wanted to know from David Mundell last June was whether the Scottish Tories could be trusted to go off on their own - develop their own distinctively Scottish policies, do their own home rule, as some radicals had been urging. It was a typically bold proposal from a Tory leader determined to think the unthinkable.

Unfortunately, the Scottish Tories are the unthinkable. Mundell's answer was that they couldn't be trusted to go out on their own. The Scottish parliamentary group suffers, he said, from "a simple lack of thinkers".

Well, he should know, since David Mundell was one of the most empty-headed of the lot when he was an MSP. He's now jumped ship to Westminster, leaving a trail of bad blood behind him.

I suspect this was why the memo was leaked. As soon as someone in Central Office told certain persons in the Scottish Tory group about it, it was a cert that the memo would enter the public domain.

There has been much speculation about the identity of the leaker. It had to be someone internal. A disaffected senior Tory with tabloid tendencies and good contacts with the hacks. Hmm.

The Tory MEP Struan Stevenson expressed outrage and disgust that such a viper should be harboured within the bosom of the party. How could anyone show such reckless disloyalty on the eve of an election?

But as Stevenson well knows, reckless disloyalty is in the Scottish Tory blood. Remember the orgy of rows and back-biting that afflicted the party on the eve of the 1997 general election, and which culminated in the resignation of the Scottish president, Micky Hirst.

Then there was the infighting over Michael Forsyth's attempts to reinvent the Scottish Tory organisation in 1988-89. Repeatedly over the past two decades the Scottish Conservatives have been their own worst enemy, and it's not a habit that they're likely to give up lightly.

The problem is that the Scottish Tory MSPs don't know what they stand for any more. They sit in a parliament they opposed, elected by virtue of a proportional electoral system which they reject, and on behalf of a party which increasingly finds them an embarrassment. Their recent business manifesto was typical. The document said that the party should take a look at fiscal autonomy, take a look at fast rail links, take a look at this and that. But there was no substance, no coherence. Certainly no vision.

The only viable option for the Scottish Tories is to embrace independence. Become a true national party of the Christian centre-right, like their counterparts in small countries in Eastern Europe. But it's not going to happen in this lifetime. So the swearing will continue as the Scottish Tories remain a race apart.