The Davidson Disasters

Ruth Davidson - Toffee Hammer of the Scots

At the moderately over-subscribed tête-à-tête that was the Scottish Conservative Party's conference in Troon last week the Scottish Tories' ex-leader in waiting peeked out from behind David Cameron just long enough to stake her claim to lead the fight to deny Scotland independence. With all the fanfare an asthmatic kazoo duo might muster she launched her own wee campaign groupette called, according to her press release, Conservatives Friends of the Union (CFU). Although they perhaps understandably prefer to leave out the "Conservatives" bit as much as possible.


The same press release seeks to give the impression that this is a broad-based "grass-roots" campaign group. A claim which is rather pointedly contradicted by it being so inextricably linked to the Tories. Davidson seems blissfully oblivious to the fact that simply having the word "Conservative" in the title will be enough to deter that significant swathe of the Scottish populace who regard the Tory brand as toxic and would rather wear a dog-turd on their lapel than a badge that identifies them with the Conservative Party.

This is not the only way in which the whole thing has evidently been as poorly thought through as we might expect of any knee-jerk reaction. Davidson's is not the first right wing group to bear the name, "Friends of the Union". This was the name used by a loyalist organisation in Northern Ireland that was implicated in attempts to sabotage the peace process there. Whether the association is intentional or merely clumsy there can be no doubting that it is, to say the least, unfortunate.

Further evidence of the lack of thought that has gone into cobbling together this group becomes obvious when you go looking for its online presence. It seems that it didn't occur to Davidson or any of her staff that it might be a good idea to secure relevant domain names before announcing their intentions. So it is not at all surprising  that if you enter the web address, www.friendsoftheunion.com, you find yourself redirected to the SNP website courtesy of some unidentified but evidently rather astute geek somewhere. Davidson will doubtless bleat about SNP "black ops", but the simple fact is that this is all down to her own embarrassing incompetence.