A senior Conservative minister publicly endorsed Murdo Fraser's plan to disband the Scottish Tories yesterday as he suggested the party looked like the "tail end" of an English organisation.
Francis Maude also claimed that a breakaway Scottish party would have a better chance of defeating the SNP’s planned independence referendum.
Mr Maude, a Cabinet Office minister and key ally of David Cameron, has previously indicated he could support such an idea.
The proposal, by one of the frontrunners to become the next party leader in Scotland, has provoked a furious row within the Scottish Tories.
Party insiders admit at the last General Election the more money they poured into some Scottish constituencies the more the electorate were motivated to vote for other parties.
Despite being in power in Westminster, in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, the party has just one MP in Scotland.
Mr Fraser’s plans were attacked by Sir Jack Harvie, the transport tycoon, who has been the party’s largest backer in Scotland.
However, they found backing from another multimillionaire last weekend.
Alister Jack said that “significant” sums would be available to the new grouping if Mr Fraser wins the race to take over from Annabel Goldie.
Mr Maude appeared not only to endorse the idea yesterday but to suggest it would help to defeat the SNP’s independence poll.
Speaking to journalists at Westminster, he said: “You could make the case that when it comes to a referendum on independence, the case for Scotland remaining part of the United Kingdom is more effectively made by the party which is incontrovertibly and unambiguously Scottish, rather than one that still has in Scotland a bit of baggage of looking like the tail end of an English party.”
He added the Conservatives in Scotland needed to work out the answer to their electoral problems, not have a solution suggested from London.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article