Will Ruth Davidson describe John Redwood as "ignorant and petty" for calling the independence movement "anti-English"?

As we all remember, the Nationalist MSP Joan McAlpine set off an almighty storm a couple of months ago by describing opposition parties as "anti-Scottish" for using their in-built majority at Westminster to circumvent the Scottish people's verdict in the Holyrood election. All of those parties excoriated her and demanded her resignation, having first cynically twisted her words to the point where she had supposedly claimed that anyone who disagreed with the SNP was anti-Scottish. The Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson, for instance, described Joan as "ignorant and petty".

Well, we intriguingly now have the mirror image of the misrepresented version of Joan's words from a senior Tory MP. John Redwood has unambiguously dismissed the entire Scottish independence movement as "anti-English" -

"Nationalists in those countries [Scotland and Wales] enjoy using the EU against England. They see that the EU’s continued insouciance to England, refusing it any recognition, is part of the process of weakening and undermining the Westminster government they dislike. It all helps to antagonise the England they wish to leave in a way which might help the change they want. One of the great ironies of the Scottish “independence” movement is it is not truly an independence movement at all. It is a dependence movement, wishing to shift Scotland to Brussels control directly. It is an anti English movement more than it is an independence movement. In bizarre opposition to all the rest of his feelings, Mr Salmond even wants to keep Scotland in the pound under the control of the Bank of England!"

Can we now look forward to Ruth Davidson's scathing thoughts on these comments, or to the deafening silence of another display of moral consistency?

On the 'substance' of Redwood's argument, it's quite difficult to fathom his logic without first understanding the paranoid psyche of the obsessive Tory Eurosceptic. It seems that in his alternative reality, the European Union is already a unitary state, and therefore if Scotland was to become an independent member of the European Union, we'd be directly swapping each and every aspect of our dependence on London for dependence on Brussels. Our wish to do so can thus only be explained by anti-Englishness.

In the real world, as an intelligent man like Redwood knows only too well, Westminster has far more control over our lives than Brussels does. The benefits system. Weapons of mass destruction on our soil. Participation in illegal wars. Broadcasting. Immigration. Even abortion law. Control over all these matters would be repatriated (to use a word Redwood ought to appreciate) to Edinburgh with independence. The powers that Brussels currently exercise would remain where they are, but the difference is that we would have a direct vote in EU institutions, as opposed to Scotland being 'represented' by David Cameron and William Hague!

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An unintentionally vivid insight into the modern Tory view of women

Neil Benny at Tory Hoose, speculating on why Alex Salmond has 'held back' with Ruth Davidson thus far -

"Salmond has a problem with women. When he debates them in his normal manner he looks like a monster. It’s OK for him to rough up Ian Gray, he’s a man and can take it. Doing that to a woman would look terrible on TV – like kicking a puppy or punching a cow."

So let me get this straight - debating in a robust fashion with a female politician would look like "kicking a puppy" or "punching a cow"? Just remind me, is Ruth Davidson a confident and articulate 33-year-old woman, or is she in fact an eight-year-old girl with braces and pigtails?

It's as if they think they've elected a human shield...

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The Scottish Tories make a historic mistake - but you weren't expecting them to break the habit of a lifetime, were you?

A 'steady-as-she-goes' choice of captain can sometimes be wise, but not when the ship sunk without trace fifteen years ago. The Tories had a golden opportunity to reconnect with the heartbeat of modern Scotland yesterday, and even to steal a pass on Labour in the process, but they've fluffed their lines yet again. So they're now stuck with Ruth Davidson for what could well be a very, very long time, and they'll just have to cling to the positives, such as they are. And those positives can only really be her personal qualities, because her wizard strategic plan seems to be (as Murdo Fraser pointed out) to carry on doing exactly what the party has been doing for many years and expect different results. Yes, it would normally be a matter of some note that the Tories have elected a young, articulate woman as leader, but they've had an articulate female leader for the last few years, so clearly that in itself isn't sufficient. And as for Davidson's youth and "freshness", that could well be a double-edged sword - I'd suggest that 32 is at the absolute extreme lower end of the age range within which someone can look plausible as a party leader. Even Alex Salmond was three years older than that when he first became SNP leader in 1990, and it was a good three or four years later before he stepped out of the shadow of Jim Sillars and really looked like a man in command.

So what happened yesterday is undoubtedly a retrograde step for the Scottish Tories, but is it bad for Scotland as well? My gut feeling is yes, because a Fraser victory would have finally forced the UK government to reluctantly accept the realities of the new Scotland. As it is, Davidson joins Willie Rennie as yet another loyal Scottish cheerleader for the London delusion that nothing really changed in May, and therefore nothing needs to be done. But as Kenny Farquharson has pointed out, that stubbornness could easily backfire on the unionist parties and make full independence a more attractive proposition to the electorate than would have been the case had devo max been embraced. And it has to be said the SNP's own long-term electoral prospects in large swathes of Scotland are looking considerably brighter today.

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Doing a Portillo?

It's a sure sign of just how completely I managed to switch off from Scottish politics while I was in Italy that I've only just caught up with the news (from fifteen days ago!) that Murdo Fraser wants (seemingly, possibly, ambiguously) to replace the Scottish Tory party with a new, autonomous, unashamedly pro-devolution centre-right force. This, it should go without saying, is the first semblance of strategic sense we've heard from a leading Scottish Tory since...oooh, about 1982, and is also a very rare instance of the interests of the Tories and of Scotland coinciding. The fact that the idea has brought Alan Cochrane out in a rash is testament enough to that.

But initially I couldn't help wondering if Fraser was making the same fatal mistake that Michael Portillo made ten years ago, ie. expounding his radical plans for change during the leadership campaign, rather than following the more cynical Blair path of saying nothing very much during the campaign, and then bouncing the party into an internal revolution immediately afterwards. However, that comparison doesn't quite work - the leader of the Scottish Tories isn't the master of all he or she surveys in the way that a UK party leader is, and therefore Fraser needs his clear-cut mandate for a new party from the word go. So he's doing the right thing, and for all our sakes we can only hope that Kate Higgins' confident forecast from a few weeks ago that Ruth Davidson was near-enough certain to win was wrong. Personally, I think Ms Davidson is a touch on the insufferable side anyway, but when has that ever been a barrier to rising to the top of the Scottish Tory ranks?

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