Prospect of former spy as Chairman of Scottish Tories ends good week for Annabel Goldie

The Daily Telegraph is reporting that David Cameron and Annabel Goldie are considering a former top MI6 man, Andrew Fulton, as the new Chairman of the Scottish Conservatives.  This is what the article tells us about him:

1. Last posting was head of station in Washington.  He also served in East Berlin, Rome and Saigon.
2. He is now a visiting law professor at Glasgow University.
3. He is an advisor to Armor, a private security intelligence firm, that also employs Sir Malcolm Rifkind.
4. "More George Smiley than James Bond" according to The Telegraph.

The news come at the end of a notable week for Scotland's Conservatives.  Earlier this week the Scottish Tories won £114m of concessions from the SNP in return for supporting their budget.  Cameron Watt of the Centre for Social Justice was particiularly pleased that one consequence of this budget deal will be a re-balancing of drug treatment towards abstinence based programmes aimed at recovery rather than maintenance.

Iain Duncan Smith's report on the social problems of Glasgow also won widespread attention and produced considerable soul-searching within a Scottish welfare establishment that has persisted with welfare policies that have failed to reduce dependency

The Economist pays tribute to the Scottish Tories in this week's edition:

"The Tories' reappearance on stage after ten years in the wilderness is a sign of big shifts in Scottish politics. The once-dominant Labour Party is out of power. Its leader in the Scottish Parliament, Wendy Alexander, is mired in two investigations into party donations and unable to oppose the SNP effectively... Of the three main opposition parties, the Tories played the cleverest game. “I argued two years ago, to much derision, that we could achieve far more of our policies with a minority than a coalition government without compromising our principles,” says Annabel Goldie, the Scottish Tory leader.  Indeed, she reckons she has forced the SNP's hand on a number of important issues—money for another 500 policemen, restoring the original SNP pledge, cuts in local taxes for 150,000 small businesses to be made by 2009 rather than 2010 and a new strategy to combat drug addiction by concentrating on abstinence and recovery rather than on replacement therapies such as methadone."

Comments

[Alan S]

If this SNP-Tory partnership works out it will encourage Cameron to believe that a Tory-LibDem partnership might also work...

[Jim]

I'm glad there is finally some movement on getting a new Scottish Chairman. David Mundell has been less than useful in the role.

[Sam R]

"If this SNP-Tory partnership works out it will encourage Cameron to believe that a Tory-LibDem partnership might also work..." (Alan S. 9/2/08)

The Scottish Tories working with the Scottish National Party is one thing, and to be applauded. How can any Party with principles ever even contemplate coalescing
with a shower of opportunists?
I would far rather see us working with honourable Labour MPs such as Kate Hoey and Frank Field.
Any crowd who are rushing around suggesting that we hold an In-or-Out referendum on the EU while doing all in their power to prevent what would possibly be the first stage in such a consultation of the people's will by helping Brown and Co. to avoid a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty/Constitution, are beyond contempt.

[Simon Denis]

Annabel Goldie is brilliant. She has cut the conservative cloth to fit Scots conditions. We should never forget that for all its unitary tradition, Great Britain is a composite a state as any in Europe - more so than France which saw local identities crushed in the revolution. As such, devolutionary compromise, in the spirit of the Austro-Hungarians, should present us with few difficulties - the West Lothian question could be answered quite speedily but for Labour's cowardice and self-interest. Never forget that it was always those rulers who either neglected or railroaded the Scots who came a-cropper. Charles the First should have let them continue in their Calvinism undisturbed; likewise Maggie should have appointed a succession of interventionist wets to prop up Scots industry. Indeed, there are many natural tories currently to be found in the ranks of the SNP who might be won back to their British allegiance by the eminently reasonable, cautious and practical spirit embodied by Ms Goldie. Yes, Mrs Thatcher was a great stateswoman and I admire her greatly - but she had a certain bull-at-a-gate roughness and narrowness which have compromised her achievements. It was England which was ready for the unfettered market; Britain as a whole needed more time in the Butskellite nursing home. Scotland still has not fully emerged. There is no need to push or to shove.

[Adrian Peirson]

Is he a BilderBerger too ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gk9sABtJxM&eurl=http://www.wearechange.org.uk/