Comparing party change in Scotland and Wales

The Scottish Conservative Party

“…Or should they prioritise traditional understandings of the nation and sovereignty that oppose further change? This tension led to a kind of ideological stasis after 1999, in which the party avoided difficult debates about its future and instead concentrated on being an effective opposition in the Scottish Parliament (Smith, 2011;Convery, 2016). The party brought its Unionism and Conservatism into line only in 2014 when it wholeheartedly backed more powers for the Scottish Parliament in the independence referendum campaign.…”

“…The party as a whole had not fully come to terms with devolution. Convery's (2016: chapter 3) interviews with Conservative MSPs in 2011-2012 reveal that the party's elites struggled to reconcile the importance they attached to the Scottish Parliament with their perception of their supporters' and members' views of devolution. Some MSPs worried that enthusiasm for the Scottish Parliament might put off core supporters from turning out.…”

British conservatism after the vote for Brexit: The ideological legacy of David Cameron

“…However, he allowed the referendum aftermath and 2015 general election to embed the drift within his party towards a more explicitly English politics, and failed to articulate a modernized Conservative national identity politics which might have countered this—for example, through a new vision for Britishness based on a federal constitutional settlement. Such a view has been promulgated by Conservatives such as the Welsh Assembly Member David Melding (2013) who has warned that without it the Union’s future is far from certain (Convery, 2016). Instead, Cameron left a conservatism that increasingly struggled to speak meaningfully with one voice to all the nations of the United Kingdom, illustrated by the radically different messages offered by the Conservatives in Scotland under the leadership of Ruth Davidson.…”

“…Instead, Cameron left a conservatism that increasingly struggled to speak meaningfully with one voice to all the nations of the United Kingdom, illustrated by the radically different messages offered by the Conservatives in Scotland under the leadership of Ruth Davidson. The referendum prompted the party north of the border to move firmly in favour of further devolution as an alternative to independence, even though Davidson had initially been elected ‘as the continuity candidate’ (Convery, 2016: 41). This trend was reinforced further after the vote for Brexit, which prompted Davidson to defy the wishes of Downing Street to campaign effectively on her own platform at the 2017 general election.…”

“…This trend was reinforced further after the vote for Brexit, which prompted Davidson to defy the wishes of Downing Street to campaign effectively on her own platform at the 2017 general election. The Scottish Conservatives’ success in gaining 12 seats (in contrast to the party’s wider fortunes) prompted speculation that the party in Scotland would breakaway completely and become an independent organization (Cochrane and Johnson, 2017), as Murdo Fraser had previously proposed in the 2011 party leadership election (Convery, 2016: 48). The Cameron legacy in terms of Unionism has therefore been to leave the Union itself in something of a parlous state, while hollowing out the capacity of conservatism to defend it.…”