THE Scottish Conservatives are facing a long and "nasty" bout of in-fighting, with leader Ruth Davidson backing an inexperienced friend against a party veteran to be Scotland's next Tory MEP.
Senior party sources say the expected retirement of Scotland's sole Tory MEP, Struan Stevenson, has created a frenzy of interest in standing for Brussels.
Applications to stand for the Tories at the next European elections in 2014 close tomorrow.
Davidson is understood to favour Dr Ian Duncan, the clerk to Holyrood's European Committee, while Stevenson believes his assistant, Belinda Don, would make an extremely able candidate.
In addition, Davidson's deputy leader, MSP Jackson Carlaw, is backing a third candidate – his policy adviser, Stuart McIntyre – setting the scene for a messy three-way squabble.
"It's shaping up to be a Class A disaster for the Scottish Conservatives," said one party member.
One of six Scottish MEPs, Stevenson, 64, can wait until next year before announcing whether he will run again. However, there is a near universal expectation he will retire.
His exit would open up a vacancy at the top of the Tory candidate list for Europe, a position that virtually guarantees election. Stevenson's salary, expenses and pensions package in 2010 came to just less than £200,000.
"People will be popping out of the woodwork for this because they'll see it as a bit of a cushy number," said one senior Tory.
"You could look at the list of failed parliamentary candidates – which is a very long list – and pick every name off it."
Don, 54, should in theory be favourite to replace her boss. However, she opposed Davidson being party leader last year, instead supporting rival candidate Murdo Fraser.
Duncan, the clerk to Holyrood's European and External Relations Committee, stood for the Tories in Aberdeen South in the 2003 Holyrood election but has since kept away from frontline politics. Meanwhile, Carlaw is backing McIntyre, his former election agent in East Renfrewshire.
"It's going to be nasty," said one senior Tory. "Belinda thinks she's got it in the bag, but she's toast."
Final selection is expected in spring 2013.
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