Byline: by John MacLeod
AS recently as the turn of the year, two men eagerly anticipated Conservative victory in the looming General Election. One, of course, was David Cameron. The other was Alex Salmond. The SNP-controlled Scottish Executive was already starting to sink in the polls, with the press and with the public, but the beleaguered First Minister could still quietly smirk at the prospect of no longer facing wily London Labour but instead the familiar old ogre of an 'English Tory government', of minimal Scottish mandate and uncertain Scottish touch.
Thomas sabo charms The Tories meanwhile did not enjoy a good January, with still no evidence of a 'Cameron bounce' north of the Border. So low were Scottish Tory expectations that in November's Glasgow North-East by-election, with an outstanding Conservative candidate, there was genuine delight in securing a derisory third-place showing, with only 5.2 per cent of the poll, and only just beating the BNP by 62 votes.
But now, as the snowdrops timidly flower, things seem suddenly to have changed. A new opinion poll this week of Scottish voting intent - by the reliable YouGov agency - caused quite a flutter.
It was scarcely a surprise to see Labour faltering a little on its 2005 support, or the slippery Liberal Democrats dropping significantly. But the sight of the Tory vote advancing to 21 per cent - higher than their showing in Scotland in the last three general elections and actually level-pegging with the SNP - has sent shockwaves through Scottish politics.
These are Conservative numbers we have not seen in Scotland since April 1993 - and Mr Salmond is not laughing now.
Not only is his hope of a new Conservative government being at immediate disadvantage in Scotland evaporating - if this Tory advance holds, never mind improves, the SNP could actually lose Westminster seats.
If this occurred, Mr Salmond himself would be immediately on the rack. And his own activists would be the last to show him mercy, not least after a succession of floundering own-goals and the distinct whiff of Nationalist scandal.
The 'Cameron bounce', for such it undoubtedly is, may indeed be modest but in politics numbers - however marginal - mean far less than momentum. And, after long and dreadful years, the momentum seems suddenly to be with the Scottish Tories.
The Conservatives remain the only Scottish party since before the First World War to win an absolute majority of the Scottish vote - 50.7 per cent and 36 of the 71 seats, in replica tag heruer watches 1955. Since then, they have been in slow decline, falling disastrously through the floor at the 1987 election, when they lost more than half their bloc of Scottish MPs.
SEVERAL reasons underpinned this slow collapse. A party that was, to all intents and purposes, the political wing of the Church of Scotland has demonstrably lost ground at the same pace at the Kirk. Great swathes of Scotland that, as recently as 1979, were unselfconsciously and tribally Tory - from Jordanhill in Glasgow to Edinburgh's Morningside and north to Aberdeenshire - are today a foreign land to the Conservatives. By the 1980s, the party had already lost smart, populist folk with Scottish accents who could genuinely connect with the public - such as Teddy Taylor and Bettie Harvie-Anderson. And by the dawn of the present century the Scottish Tories were (and still largely remain) bereft of significant talent.
By 1997, this was a core-vote party - a greying, elderly vote. Since then, electoral support has declined sti
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