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In an increasingly negative leadership campaign, two of the contenders have again hit out at Murdo Fraser’s plans for a new centre right party for Scotland.

Lord Forsyth, who has publicly announced his support for Ruth Davidson said today that disbanding the Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party would be “the greatest political error since Bonnie Prince Charlie turned back at Derby to face certain defeat”. The former Secretary of State for Scotland is no stranger to opposing Murdo Fraser. At the Scottish party’s conference earlier in the year, Forsyth was part of a panel with Fraser at a Telegraph fringe meeting to discuss the Scotland Bill.

Speaking today, Forsyth warned that: “Harping back to the halcyon days of the fifties when Scottish Conservatives had 50% of the vote is misleading and misguided. There were only two candidates in most constituencies, there were no credible SNP candidates and the mere handful of Liberal Unionists supported the Tories.  Scottish Conservatives can only rebuild their fortunes by fighting in Scotland with conviction and determination.  Abandoning our party now would be the greatest political error since Bonnie Prince Charlie, on the advice of fainthearts, turned back at Derby to face certain defeat. It would condemn the Scottish Tories to years of internal constitution wrangling when it is our duty to fight to preserve the United Kingdom and Scotland’s future prosperity.”

However, Liz Smith MSP, Campaign Manager for Murdo Fraser, has hit back attempting to ease the negativity of the campaign by saying: ”It’s extremely important that we avoid negative campaigning and temper our language. Murdo’s team and his supoporters will continue to present a positive vision for the future and I’m sure the members expect that from all of the candidates. It is clear that our party has an identity problem which cannot be solved by a new leader alone or by new policies.  We respect the party’s establishment figures enormously, and we respect the view expressed by some of them that we do not need to change.  However, we fundamentally disagree.”

Almost simultaneously, Murdo Fraser has released a series of question and answers aimed at explaining his proposals to people as yet unclear about what his vision entails. (the full document is available here). Murdo said that, “all over the country, the momentum in favour of our transformation into a new, progressive, distinctly Scottish centre-right party is growing quickly.  For the first time in decades our members are hearing a proposal to turn us from being a party which loses all the time into one which starts to win. People are telling me that they like my proposal, but they want to know how it’s going to work in practice.”

Responding to the Q&A document, Jackson Carlaw, another opposer of Fraser’s plans said that another re-launch is bad news for Fraser: “Like Gertrude in ‘Hamlet’, I am afraid Murdo ‘doth protest too much’. It is not that members do not understand his proposal to disband the Party; it is that they understand it all too well. Despite more re-launches than the last Labour government it is clear this policy has failed to convince and has now been rejected by Annabel Goldie. This latest Q&A repeats all the cosy assumptions about future rights of Party members which no new Party is in any position to guarantee. A superficial name change will make no difference and is in any event, both divisive and is now proving to be the huge distraction I predicted. Today’s release confirms again that we would be navel gazing for at least 18 months with no guarantee that Murdo’s plans would even then be approved and all while Alex Salmond plots to break up the Union.

Carlaw added, “What is needed is a change in substance; a change in the face of the Party, a strategy to develop and adopt election winning policies and an election winning organisation to support them. Instead of focusing on new logos and letterheads, we need to focus on the defence of the Union – Scotland’s place in the United Kingdom and the Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party’s place in the UK Conservative Party.”

It remains to be seen what effect this latest development will have on the campaign, but what is clear is that extensive campaigning time is being spent rebutting announcements by other candidates and not focussing on their plans for the party. What we believe members want to see are positive ideas to put the Scottish Party back on the road to recovery. With national media attention shifting back onto the campaign as we enter party conference week, the next hustings at Party conference in Manchester next Monday, 3rd October will be the first time the candidates will each face each other on the podium. As the campaign heats up, it’ll be interesting to see which candidate directs the course of debate.

UPDATE: John Lamont, campaign manager for Ruth Davidson has just released the following statement in response to Murdo’s Q&A document:

“Party members will want to know what happens if Murdo is not able to negotiate this. Is he not in danger of creating his own version of the West Lothian Question?  Why exactly is it that English and Welsh Conservatives should grant members of the Scottish ‘new party’ a vote, and therefore a say in the running of their party – which would be legally and organisationally separate – without having a say of their own on the leadership of Murdo’s ‘new party’?”

Mr Lamont added: “Our fear is that if Murdo does succeed in abolishing the party, he will effectively be disenfranchising all those Conservatives who wish to continue to have the right to vote for Conservative candidates, a Conservative Government and a Conservative Prime Minister. The future of our party is at stake here and it does not appear to us that Murdo and his supporters have really thought through all the possible consequences of taking this drastic and unnecessary step. His document poses more questions than it answers.”