Wow – we’ve got a lot of excited Scottish Conservatives this week – we’ve made the news!  How sad though that it takes a proposal to kill off the party to get us on the public’s agenda and to get us talking to each other.

The leadership contest smacks of all the failures of the last 12 years.  The fact that we are faced with a choice of the deputy leader of the last 7 years who must bear some responsibility for the state we are in, a rookie MSP who’s only been a member of the party for 3 years and an MSP for less than a year, or someone who is best known in the party for cracking jokes and filling in on stage at conference, illustrates how terrible the Scottish Conservatives have been at attracting, developing and retaining new talent.  The MSP group also have to take responsibility – what have they achieved in voting terms over the last 12 years when Holyrood gave them a voice that the electorate denied us in Westminster?  We have made no significant progress and have been at best static and at worst in decline.

Murdo Fraser’s suggestion of killing off the party conjures up images of the Gadarene swine charging over the cliff to their fate.  I cannot reconcile myself to a Unionist party that wants to break free.  Murdo is keen to learn the lessons of history and harks back to the 1950s for inspiration.  But back then we were living in essentially a two party system so the analogy doesn’t translate to today’s political landscape. He also seems haunted by his opposition to devolution.  The rest of us – especially those of us who were not involved in the debates of the late 1990s – have moved on.  We’ve nothing to apologise for on devolution, what we need to apologise for is our failure to identify what being a Conservative in a devolved Scotland means. We need to apologise for not being an effective opposition and for letting Alec Salmond have it all his own way. Murdo has not yet articulated how this new party, with the same members, candidates and creed as the current party would actually be any different. Does he really think the electorate are that stupid – that when Rory the Tory becomes Rory the Reformer they can’t spot it’s the same old Rory?

So what am I looking for in a new leader? There seem to be two distinct areas in the Scottish Conservative party that require urgent reform and action. Firstly, the membership structure and administration of the party needs a radical overhaul and secondly, we must articulate a clearer vision of what it means to be a Conservative in Scotland. The vision can be achieved by a leader of the MSP group, but I suspect that the reform of party administration will be beyond the scope of the new leader but both are vital if we are to see progress.

I am a Conservative because I believe that family, education and work are the foundations of a successful society.  I believe in encouraging everyone who wants to do a bit better – for their family or their community.  These are values that play just as well to people in Scotland as to the rest of the UK but where are we articulating them?  How does the so-called average family, struggling with rising costs, mortgages and no pay rises know that we are on their side?  We chose to launch our 2010 Holyrood campaign with a pledge to cut £200 Council Tax for pensioners, which may be worth, but surely not calculated to draw new voters to our cause?  In my field, culture, we had a great story to tell as we were the only party not planning to cut the cultural budget.  Cultural policy is a devolved one and here was a perfect opportunity to outline our Scottish policy that was distinct from what was happening south of the border. However, it took me much digging and a final desperate telephone call to Derek Brownlee to establish this fact.  Why on earth weren’t we shouting our commitment to Scotland’s culture from the roof tops?!

The membership of the party in Scotland is ageing and in decline. Administration is regularly in the hands of volunteers (often in their 80s) who have no inclination to change how things have been done for the last 30 years.  Candidate selections attract barely a handful of members. There is no mechanism for joining the party online in Scotland and anyone joining, donating or supporting centrally is not fed back to the local office, leading to a lack of communication with new recruits. With near annual elections (Westminster, Holyrood, Council, Europe) the constituencies face financial meltdown.

With constituency boundaries different for each election, surely now is the time to centralise membership functions. The charity sector has many examples of being able to better serve supporters and donors nationally whilst still providing tailored local services and events. Administration can be done online without alienating those who still prefer to send in their cheques and receive letters through the post. This could be achieved for the Conservative Party in Scotland, but only if we are prepared to professionalise our membership structure.

So I’m looking forward to hearing all the leadership candidates set out their stall and also to the hustings during this leadership campaign.  I’m not sure any one person will have all the answers but they must be someone who is able to attract the right team.  There is much talent within all ranks of the party currently.  There are also those who currently don’t publicly support us because they don’t see us actively working to achieve change. They don’t see the point. The new leader must persuade them that we are worth investing in.

This weekend I am off to sunnier climes – I hope, (although knowing my luck, it’ll be more hurricane chasing than Indian summer).  This means I will be missing the gathering of the Scottish Conservative party faithful in Perth.  I’m not sorry in one respect – I am sure that signing up to the new party constitution is a formality – but I am sorry to miss the opportunity to chat to the leadership candidates and of course, I’m going to miss the gossip.