Cameron: I want to win Scotland back
David Cameron has admitted the Conservatives treated Scotland badly in the past – but pledged never to take it for granted again.
He is considering whether to stop Scottish MPs voting for English issues at Westminster, but today warned the “sour Little Englanders” who wanted to split up the UK that he would “fight them all the way”.
In a speech in Glasgow that opens his party’s campaign for next May’s Holyrood elections, Mr Cameron acknowledged that Margaret Thatcher had committed a “series of blunders” in the 1980s that had undermined the Tories’ Scottish support.
Testing out the hated poll tax – which eventually led to her downfall – in Scotland was “clumsy and unjust”, he admitted, and the Tories’ opposition to devolution had continued “long after it became clear that it was the settled will of the people”.
It was no surprise then that the Conservatives only had one Scottish MP, 17 MSPs – out of a total of 129 – and controlled just one in 32 Scottish councils. “That’s pretty dismal,” Mr Cameron noted.
But with the 300th anniversary of the Act of Union taking place now, the Witney MP argued it was now the “appropriate moment to take stock”.
“We need an undogmatic, balanced reassessment. It should be neither North Brit nor Braveheart in character but sober and objective,” he said.
The West Lothian question, which asks why Scottish MPs should be able to vote on English matters in the Westminster parliament but not vice versa, was a “problem”, Mr Cameron said.
And he said he was considering plans put by Kenneth Clarke’s policy taskforce for English votes for English issues, in a “calm and considered fashion”.
But Mr Cameron warned that those who reacted to the Scottish National party’s (SNP’s) demand for independence by saying “good riddance” were misguided – and he would fight them.
“No one is prouder of being English than I am. But I’m also passionately attached to the idea of Britain,” he said.
“Being British isn’t about ethnicity or local identity. It’s one of the most successful examples in history of an inclusive civic nationalism. Britain has given the world so much and I believe that we still have more to give.”
Gordon Brown delivered a speech in Edinburgh last week when he also pledged his commitment to the union, emphasising both the close personal ties between Scots and the English and the economic advantages to Scotland remaining in the UK.
But Mr Cameron today attacked the chancellor for trying to “cow or intimidate” Scotland through “fear of the economic consequences of going it alone”, and promised instead to put a case that “speaks to the heart as well as the head”.
However, SNP leader Alex Salmond dismissed Mr Cameron’s words as an “embarrassing retreat”, saying: “Margaret Thatcher used to ‘handbag’ Scotland and now Cameron is trying to soft soap us – neither will work.
“Mr Cameron will find out next May at the polls that Scots have long memories and his no amount of re-branding can disguise the fact that he is an anti-Scottish Tory.”
