THE Scottish Conservatives were plunged into a fresh crisis last night after a sacked election candidate said he had been denied natural justice by the party’s “dysfunctional” leadership.
Malcolm Macaskill, who was dumped as the leading candidate in Glasgow last week, said his treatment would cost the party £1 million, because his friend, Tom Coakley, a former footballer who made a fortune in property, had now withdrawn a pledge to give the Tories £100,000 a year for a decade.
It has also been reported that a second major Tory donor, John McGlynn, the airport car park magnate, no longer wants to contribute to party funds in protest at the treatment of Macaskill…
Macaskill, 51, was selected by Tory activists in Glasgow last year to head the party’s regional list for the Scottish elections, making it all but certain he would have become an MSP this May.
However, in a CV he circulated to members, he described himself as a successful businessman, omitting two bankruptcies and a court action against him for unpaid income tax.
He was the second Conservative candidate to quit as Iain Whyte, had pulled out from standing for Maryhill and Springburn after realising he would have had to stand down from the Lothian health board and, under a change in the rules, would not necessarily have been reappointed after the election.
But he wasn’t the last Tory candidate to go for a third one has also pulled out:
David Meikle withdrew in Glasgow because he felt that his allegations of vote rigging on the list for the city had not been sufficiently investigated.
The complaints centre on the Conservative Rutherglen’s Association, whose membership shot up by about 150 members from a starting point of 17 in the months before the selections for Conservative candidates took place.
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8 Comments
Hello Mark.
Is it true that the Lib Dems are unable to field candidates in every Holyrood constituency and two that you are fielding are emigrating to America after the election?
It’s worth remembering that the Tories never stand a chance in Scotland, essentially they are a protest vote for the right. They also look to beat the Lib Dems, who may slip into 5th place behind the Greens.
@G, that was a You Gov poll for the Scotsman – two good reasons not to believe the outcome.
@KL I really don’t think complacency is what the Scottish Lib Dems need at the moment. In every Scottish poll it looks like things will be grim for them.
@g – maybe so, but the YouGov calculations for Scotland are usually flawed – for example, the political weighting they use for each party is based on the General Election result and not the Scottish Elections, which skews the poll against the SNP, Lib Dems and Tories and towards Labour. It also doesn’t acknowledge the “digging in” factor; the concept that a lot of Lib Dem constituency MSPs have been around their constituencies for donkey’s years and are actually personally popular, even if the party isn’t. That’s not to say it’s going to be a great night, but I just don’t think it’ll be as bad as the polls say.
On the last line of the article, is that saying that the Constituency Party had 17 members in total ? Even for The Tories in Glasgow that sounds like an astonishing figure.
On our prospects in May, whether you look at Scotland or the English Locals, either ICM or Yougov are going to have egg on their faces – they cant both be right.
There was another defection today. Ex-Tory Cllr David Clews of Renfrewshire Council joined Labour. He is not a candidate for Holyrood but his ward does include part of the seat Annabel Goldie is standing for. Ouch.
@paul barker, of course ICM and Yougov can’t both be right at the moment, although their polls do tend to merge as the elections approach, but that doesn’t mean the lib dems aren’t struggling. The green party in scotland are now openly courting the lib dem vote and even their members. It may well be successful too, if you don’t want to vote for either of the big two in Scotland, and aren’t a Tory, then traditionally you were left with the lib dems. The greens are now offering an alternative with similar policies to pre-2010 lib dems.