29/09/2014 Scotland 2014

Is Tory still a toxic brand in Scotland?

And what can they do to win back Scottish voters

before the next general election in just seven months' time?

At the Tory Party conference in Birmingham, the party faithful are

lapping up promises of of benefit freezes and more austerity to come.

Is this any way to try and win more than one Scottish Westminster seat?

UK air strikes in Iraq were approved by a huge majority of MPs,

What do they think we should do to oppose the Islamic State's

And we may soon have our first female first minister - but do we

need to take action to get more women into the Scottish Parliament?

The Conservatives have pledged to win back their popularity

They believe the referendum has given them a new voice

But will that translate into more seats

Our political correspondent Lucy Adams reports

The Conservatives are determined to get back in the game and they've got

a number of seats in their sights. Better known for its golf courses,

coffee bars and leafy suburbs than working men's clubs, East

Renfrewshire was a Conservative seat for decades. This used to be the

safest Conservative seat in Scotland. That was until the 1997

Westminster general election, when Labour took it from them. The

question is, what will it take for the Conservative party to win back

this former heartland and others like it? Times have changed but the

Tories say they've raised to their profile and popularity as a result

of the referendum and the work of Scottish leader Ruth Davidson. This

is a new political age and we've got to have new ideas to take the

country forward and I think Ruth has shown that. With the devolution

proposals, we've seen a lot of innovative stuff and that's going to

be good for us. Importantly, that means we can reach out to those

voters who, perhaps, have been supporting us the last 15 years but

are natural Conservatives in areas like East Renfrewshire. Those are

the areas we are trying to get back. On the green, a sense of optimism

for the party. They'll struggle a wee bit early doors but I think

they'll do it. You think they'll win it back? Do you think the referendum

has made a difference? It helped, big-time. The fact that Alex Salmond

isn't going to be there any longer... I think it will be a great

competition. I hope the Tories get back in again. But on this high

street, there were mixed views about whether the Tories have changed

enough to win people over. They're not the Conservative Party I once

knew. They've changed totally. And I blame one lady for that. Who do you

blame? Mrs Thatcher. She changed it so badly that really, there's no

natural relationship with the Scots. I think it will go back very much to

Conservative. Even our children and their children. At their party

conference South of the border, their only Scottish MPs said they're

on the up. What Ruth has done has been able to open people's eyes to

the Conservatives and they are willing to consider voting

Conservative. They've seen a young, dynamic woman leading our party,

setting out a passionate case for the UK, but also talking about

Scotland's future. They can see that Ruth is committed to Scotland,

building a better Scotland, and I think they're open to voting for us

but we're going to seal the deal. The referendum may have boosted

their profile and they've changed their logo but have they done enough

to set out new policies and redefine their brand? It's difficult to say

whether the referendum will help them in the general election or in

future elections. I think in coming out so strongly for more powers for

the Scottish Parliament, that helped one element of their platform but

the Conservative party in Scotland also needs to think about how it

plays itself on the political spectrum, so instead of placing

itself on the centre-right of the British political spectrum, they

need to think about basing themselves on the centre-right of

the Scottish political spectrum, which looks into things like image

and policy, which I need to think about in advance of the elections.

But in East Renfrewshire, the Tories will be working to win everything

they can. The party says it has a new voice and a new profile, but

many think they've still got a fair way to go.

Earlier, I spoke to Conservative politician

and member of the European Parliament for Scotland Ian Duncan.

George Osborne has been laying out his plans for further austerity if

the Tories win the next election, talking about freezing benefits and

?25 billion of cuts to come. Is that going to win you any votes in

Scotland? I think what we've got to do now is make sure the recovery

which we are witnessing is safe. We got to make sure it continues and

delivers the people of Scotland. The policies being set out today are

broadly sensible policies and I think they will help them avert, and

make safe, that recovery. -- help them deliver. The benefit freeze

will severely affect a lot of families who are poorly paid and

survive on working tax credits. There will be a fair amount of pain

felt from these policies in Scotland, which isn't going to adapt

the book to vote for you, is it? I think when it comes to that

election, there will be a number of things people will be asking. One

is, are you safe in the Conservatives' hands in terms of the

economy or not? Do you want to give the keys to the car back to those

who crashed the car? I don't think the people of Scotland want that.

There was some hostility about Scottish MPs with Eric Pickles and

Digby Jones talking about how unfair it was that Scottish MPs could vote

on English matters in a pretty hostile fashion. I think the reality

is, we've spent nearly two years talking about Scotland and how

Scotland should be covered - that's right, but the rest of the UK hasn't

had that same debate. They've watched from afar and I think it's

time the England and Wales to catch up. That's a debate that has to be

had. We've settled the situation in Scotland but we haven't settled at

yet in the rest of the UK. There is concern that as the Prime Minister

tipped the English question into the pot early last Friday morning, that

is going to hold up the process of devolution and more powers in

Scotland. No, it won't. I spoke with Mr Cameron tonight and he made it

very clear to me and to the audience later that that would not happen.

The powers which were promised will be delivered. It will happen. That

is the pledge that was signed alongside Labour and the Lib Dems

and the Tories in Scotland have been campaigning with Labour and the Lib

Dems for the last few months, all of you sharing a platform. Do you think

that has changed voters' views of Tories in Scotland? As it helps to

detoxify the brand a bit, having campaigned with other parties? --

has it helped. The number of people signed up to the Conservative

friends of the union is around 80,000. An extraordinary figure of

individuals who gave up their time freely to do around the doors and

talk to people and to fight for what they passionately believed in, which

was the UK and Scotland's place in the UK. That is an extra ordinary

basis on which to fight a general election and I think it will make a

difference. We know there are a considerable number of Tory voters

in Scotland, just shy of 500,000, but you don't tend to do very well

in Westminster elections, having won just one MP at the last couple of

elections. Have you done enough this time to win back seats like East

Renfrewshire and increase your representation in Westminster? I

think we have done two things. We've energised our debate and reminded

people of why they vote Conservative in the first place, which is to

deliver things they want to see on the ground. The second thing is, you

can't look at this in isolation from the other parties. Right now, the

Labour Party vote is flaccid. I think it is haemorrhaging and, in

some places, directly to the SNP. In places like Renfrewshire, it remains

to be seen whether the Labour vote will hold about all. In that

situation, we're in a very strong position to remind people why not so

long ago, they returned a Conservative MP to Westminster. How

many Tory MPs will be going to Westminster in 2015 from Scotland,

do you think? I would certainly say more than we're sending right now,

as a minimum. But there are whole parts of the country now, in this

referendum, that voted very strongly no. We saw a significant number of

people who voted SNP at the last Scottish election and the last

general election voting no. I believe those individuals will

return to the party. There are parts of the country - where I come from

my southern Perthshire - where people will be looking very

seriously at the Conservative party. The same is true in the

Borders, Galloway, and Argyll. There are a number of places where we will

see our vote go up and we will have more seats than we do at present.

Earlier, I spoke to our political correspondent at the conference Tim

I asked him how confident Scottish Conservatives scene of improving

their Westminster performance. I think they see their chances a lot

better than there -- that they have recently. There has been more of a

spring in their step and from the event David Cameron attended where

there was a lot of jollity and optimism and hope that they will be

able to do better given the no campaign and the referendum result,

they hope that they could capitalise on that in the areas where the SNP

had hoped to win a yes vote and it turned out to be a no vote. David

Cameron mentioned that in his speech and said that they should capitalise

on that, go out and do what they had not done in previous years and try

to win more Westminster seats. This is what he had to say. We've got the

message, we've got the leader. Now I think we can really turn the next

200 days into an opportunity to deliver more Conservative seats in

the Westminster parliament for Scotland. That should be our aim,

that should be our goal and please, my friends, let's do everything to

bring it about. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And you know a bit more about how David Cameron felt as he watched the

referendum result come in? Yes, he was on very good form tonight when

he addressed that perception of Scottish delegates. It is usually

very well attended and was extremely well attended tonight, submit

because of that no result, but he was keen to explain to people how

relieved he was at that outcome on the 18th. We know he's already got

into trouble with his explanation of how the Queen reacted. He was in his

Downing Street press office and his two sons came down, one of them in

his tartan pyjamas, and they sat and watched the results coming in and he

said he was very happy to go to bed as Prime Minister of the UK and also

to wake up as Primus of the UK. Thanks very much for talking to us

from Birmingham. British fighter jets are back flying

over Iraq, The motion was carried

overwhelmingly at Westminster on Friday to support

the coalition against Islamic State But SNP MPs were amongst those who

voted Do they reflect a different

attitude among Scottish voters British Tornado fighter jets are

once again engaged in military activity over Iraq. It's the UK's

third military intervention there in 25 years, this time against Islamic

State targets. It's why the Prime Minister recalled parliament last

Friday. It is inevitable that the shadow of the UK's last military

involvement in Iraq hangs heavy over this chamber today, but the

situation we face today is very different. We are acting in response

to a direct appeal from the sovereign government of Iraq to help

them deal with this mortal terrorist threat. It's a threat to Iraq and to

Britain. The eyes to the right, 534. The nose to the right, 43. Those

against, ten were from Scottish constituencies, half to the SNP. It

was not a long-term plan for dealing with the Islamic State but there are

concerns that there is no long-term plan. Since Friday's vote, UK planes

have returned to base without dropping any bombs, but locating and

confirming targets may not be an easy task. The CIA estimates that

ISPs has 30,000 soldiers stopped -- that Islamic State has 30,000

soldiers. It is believed to have changed tactics to counter the

effects of air strikes, breaking into smaller units, more difficult

to locate. Tonight, Islamic State are very close to Baghdad, raising

questions about the effectiveness of US led air strikes so far. Concerns

about mission creep are also apparent. At the moment, the UK is

involved in air strikes only but critics fear that soldiers could

once again find themselves on Iraqi soil.

Earlier I spoke to the SNP MP Stewart Hosie in Dundee.

He voted against the air strikes. And, from London, Labour MP

Gemma Doyle who voted yes. I started

by asking Mr Hosie why he's opposed to military intervention in Iraq.

First of all we share the same revulsion of Islamic State as

everyone else. The concerns we had where we seemed to be being asked

rather less to support targeted action against Islamic State is now

in Iraq, rather it seemed to be an opening salvo into yet another

open-ended middle east conflict and one which as usual, the UK

Government had no exit strategy, we were not prepared to vote for

something like that again. But the Iraqi government themselves asked

for UK help. They did and we did recognise that. But the Prime

Minister said during that debate he wants to do something with Syria, he

said not today but soon. This is a country that he wanted to bomb a

year ago and now the regime of President Assad is almost an ally in

the fight against Islamic State. The whole plan seemed to be confused and

contradict jury. Almost an open-ended conflict. Without an exit

strategy or plan to win the peace, we might find that we are backing --

that we are back in the same position in a few years time. Do you

share the concerns of the SNP that there is not an exit strategy? I

think Stewart must have been attending a different debate to me

last week. The Prime Minister and leader of the opposition could not

have been clearer that they were putting before Parliament a very

specific proposal which does not involve British books on the ground,

it involves targeted air strikes. Islamic State are murderers and

barbaric as a regime and we do not challenge them at our peril. They

are destabilising the entire region. And they're a threat to our security

here in the UK as well. Therefore I think given there is a legal basis

and this was a request of the Iraqi government, it is the right thing to

do at this time. You must agree with that assessment of the threat that

Islamic State polls in the region and to the UK? -- pose. I have no

difficulty agreeing with the barbarity of this organisation. And

had the UK Government said they intended to properly armed the

Kurdish military or to properly train and equip and prepare the

Iraqi army to take the fight to Islamic State on the gates of

Baghdad we would have agreed without any difficulty. These things can

still happen but what we were faced with was a conflict which would be

open-ended and may last for many years. It seemed rather less about

targeted strikes and more the opening salvo potentially of another

open-ended Middle East war. We have seen what happened in the past, and

destabilisation that happened with the last war and the last thing we

want is limited success against Islamic State and the possibility of

them emerging a few months later with a new name and straight back to

square one. The solution will have to be Muslim lead. It is with the

Iraqi army, arming them and training them that Islamic State will

properly be tackled? That work is already going on and is part of how

Islamic State must be defeated. The air strikes which the UK are

participating in our part of a larger strategy and there is a real

international coalition here are Arab countries involved, I think in

some of the air strikes of the last week there were more Arab than US

troops participating. So it is part of a wider strategy and is important

that the UK plays are part and work with countries around the world to

tackle this really horrendous threat. Bus to ourselves and people

in the middle east as well. -- both. It is clear from our participation

so far that were not needed militarily to take part in the air

strikes. It is for diplomatic reasons? The Defence Secretary has

said we are providing some specialist capabilities so it is

important to do that. But it is about countries around the world

thing we do not accept the values of this brutal and murderous regime and

we are standing up against them. And countries in the region I think have

looked to us for support to do that. It is important that we all work

together. I think this is, the SME P has an isolationist policy. That's

the SNP. I think we'll have two work together to us safe. The Scottish

medical class are engaged in discussion calling for legal quotas

to achieve a 50-50 ratio of females to males at Holyrood and across

Scottish public life. A recent report, "Sex Power:

Who Runs Britain in 2014" from The Fawcett Commission shows

only 35 percent of our MSPs are women and less than

a quarter of councillors female. Labour MSP for

Edinburgh Kezia Dugdale is among those campaigning and joins me now.

What we want is the power to legislate for gender quotas to be in

the Scottish Parliament. That would require all political parties to

have 50-50 candidates for every election going forward. Also across

councils and public bodies. That would be a fantastic legacy for the

future of Scotland. The Labour Party already operate female short list in

some circumstances but you cannot oppose this on parties that do not

want to go for 50-50 representation with Mac if you look across Europe

many countries already have this kind of mechanism. They recognised

that it gives better policies. It is a tremendous opportunity to learn

the lessons of the referendum and to do Pollux dashed to do politics

differently. Now the headlines from around the world.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Spanish government's move to

block our referendum on Catalan independence by asking the

Constitutional Court to declare the vote illegal. The New York Times

leads with the umbrella revolution in Hong Kong. Protesters are

demanding more democratic elections and continue to defy the police

crackdown and calls from the authority to disperse. In the South

China morning Post covers the same events in Hong Kong and reports that

the mood has turned festive amongst protesters as police are keeping a

low profile. Joining me to talk through

the rest of the day's news, Susan Stewart

founder member of Women for Independence and Labour Party

Scottish Parliamentary candidate Catriona Headley.

The Tory party conference dominating the news. And all rather embarrassed

about one defection and the resignation of Brooks Newmark

yesterday after sending some unfortunate photographs of himself

to a journalist posing as a young party worker. But there is a bit of

buzz about the press. Mark Pritchard was also contacted by this fake

party PR and sent a letter to the police today and the new press

complaints commission to make complaints about the Sunday Mirror

and the tactics they used to try to interact Tory MPs. I do not see that

there is any public interest in this story. There is no fool like an old

fool and that does not deemed to be a story to me. The tactics and

deployed and the ethics behind it have to be questioned. Whether it is

a fishing expedition or entrapment, whether there was suggestions that

it could be amounting to a criminal offence even. The women involved in

this have had their photographs used without their consent and knowledge

and they could have civil claims open to them. I felt it was a story

from a bygone age and I thought we had left all this behind. I am for a

free and robust press and that might feel uncomfortable for people in the

public eye but there has to be public interest and I do not see

that here. It will be the first real test for the new press complaints

commission. People will be watching carefully to see how they operate.

Absolutely. The old saw about what the public would be interested in

not equating with public interest is a very good one. I think we did not

need to know about semi-netted photographs! Dashed semi naked. I

wonder if newspaper editors look at the stories that they're running and

think, could I explain that story to my nine-year-old daughter or son. If

the answer is no then think twice. I think the story was prurient and not

in the interests of everyone. There was no allegation of hypocrisy and

there has been a lot of cross-party revulsion. Well a more serious

matter in Birmingham, George Osborne promised more austerity, benefit

freezes, also talking about Scotland being given more control over income

tax powers. He says when Scotland gets greater control over its taxes

he suspect they will choose to put them down instead of up. I think the

story -- I think the Tories have been clever. Income tax is just one

economic lever and is somewhat limited in terms of kick-starting

employment for example. So the Scottish Parliament, while

implementing Tory and indeed Labour Uncut, is something of a

double-edged sword. Given the current public opinion in Scotland,

I think it would be unlikely that any Scottish political party at this

stage would choose to lower income tax in and of itself. But without

the kind of full powers over a range of taxation and especially welfare

because they ought to be linked. I'm not sure that even the Tories and

their plans for enhanced ablution, which are considerable and go

further than Labour, they're not nearly enough however and I think it

goes towards more extensive powers that can make a real difference to

people 's lives. And once those powers are agreed, TUC attacks being

cut here? Dashed TUC taxes. Dashed to you see taxes. We are at a stage

where if we cannot have a discussion about the kind of Scotland we want,

then when can we do it. People need to come to the table and have a

strong discussion about the powers we have. We had their dashed varying

powers since the return of the Scottish Parliament and we need to

remember that. The parties cannot shirk from the responsibility in

terms of the expectation of the Scottish people now. It is going to

be a big expectation to meet. I just want to play you one short clip from

Eric Pickles who also spoke about Scotland today and the idea of

English votes for English laws. In the mother of parliaments we cannot

have platinum card wielding Scottish MPs who can vote for measures in

England, in English constituencies, but not in their own Scottish seats.

If I vote for a change in the NHS, or schools or housing, I had to bear

the consequences of my vote. I have to look the red of Essex in the eye

and justify my actions. -- the electorate. Not so Scottish MPs who

have power without responsibility in England. If it making light --

waking life difficult for Scottish politicians when you hear the

English MPs talking like that. I think it is an easy slogan but the

reality is in no way simple. Having just had the endorsement of the UK

with the referendum, we need to be working together in order to

strengthen the union and not weaken it. I think these kinds of political

point scoring things are not helping matters. I'm enjoying watching a

union parties arguing about this? Not at all. I think the more they

argue, the more distant powers become. Eric Pickles represent not

the minority view amongst the Tory party, a view that was well hitting

within the referendum campaign. But democracy cannot be delayed in

Scotland because England still have to have a more comprehensive debate.

That's all from us tonight. Thank you for watching.

Party conferences in the run up to a general election usually lack edge,

they are dull, stage managed affairs.