Annabel Goldie, the Scottish Tory leader, yesterday took her party's campaign to Northern Ireland, with the message that Conservatives on both sides of the Irish Sea want to work on "bread and butter issues" instead of the constitution.

Annabel Goldie, the Scottish Tory leader, yesterday took her party's campaign to Northern Ireland, with the message that Conservatives on both sides of the Irish Sea want to work on "bread and butter issues" instead of the constitution.

The Conservative Party has started organising in the province in a bid to win seats and to move party politics beyond its entrenched constitutional dividing line.

Former Ulster Unionist First Minister Lord David Trimble has joined the cause, and Miss Goldie visited the Stormont Assembly and later spoke at a party event in Bangor.

Her predecessor, David McLetchie, played a role in encouraging Ulster Unionists to support the devolution process, drawing on his party's experience of having opposed it for Scotland but then gaining from it once it was implemented.

Miss Goldie told fellow Conservatives: "There is a new politics and a new shape to the UK in the 21st century.

"We have the positive change wrought by maturing devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and we have the likely prospect of a Conservative Government at Westminster."

Using Labour's unionist slogan of "stronger together, weaker apart", she went on: "If, in our different parts of the UK, we want to play our part in meeting global challenges and our immediate domestic ones we must move on from constitutional wrangle.

"Hopefully, in Scotland we are reaching that destination where the constitution no longer dominates and bread and butter politics is the only game in town."