Tories target Scottish revival

The Conservatives are targeting a series of seats in Scotland at the general election as they attempt to reverse a drought that began when they lost every Scottish MP in the 1997 election. The Tories – currently holding only one of 59 Scottish seats at Westminster – have targeted 11 seats across central and southern Scotland, and the nationalist heartland of its north-east. Opinion polls, which have the Tories hovering at around 20% in Scotland, suggest the party could win up to five seats if it succeeds in squeezing out the Liberal Democrats. Party officials believe that could help David Cameron achieve the slim majority needed to win the election. Cameron was campaigning in Scotland today and gave a rallying speech to party activists at a one-day conference in Perth, a previous Tory stronghold in the target seat of Perth and North Perthshire which is now held, with a slim 1,521 majority, by the Scottish National party. The Conservative leader did not set out any new policies or make any costed spending commitments, but promised the party would deliver a "radical" and "progressive" government promoting deregulation, decentralisation, political accountability and fiscal responsibility. "These plans are seriously bold, seriously radical," he said. "I promise you if we achieve even half of our ambitions, it will be the biggest change in how the country is run for more than a generation." The Tories are clear favourites to win the marginal Labour constituency of Edinburgh South, which was vacated by the former junior minister Nigel Griffiths last month when he became the latest in a series of experienced senior Labour MPs to retire. Griffiths, a close ally of Gordon Brown, was defending one of Labour's slimmest majorities – a margin of 405 over the Liberal Democrats – but suffered a series of political and personal setbacks. SNP and Tory figures predict Labour could be relegated to third place in a seat that was held by Griffiths for 23 years. The Conservatives also claim to be competing for the far less vulnerable seats held by the chancellor, Alistair Darling, in Edinburgh South-west, where he is defending a 7,242 majority over the Tories, and the East Renfrewshire constituency of Jim Murphy, the Scottish secretary, who has a 6,657-vote lead over the Tories. The Liberal Democrat frontbench spokesman, Michael Moore, is under intense pressure from the Tories in Roxburghshire, Berwickshire and Selkirk, one of three seats in the Borders on the Conservative hitlist. With the Lib Dems down to as low as 13% in Scottish polls, Moore is facing a tough battle with John Lamont, who unseated a Scottish Lib Dem minister when winning the equivalent Holyrood seat in 2007. The seats share 47,000 voters, effectively making it a head-to-head fight between two sitting parliamentarians. Cameron today repeated a key Conservative message to voters that the general election would be a straight fight between the Tories and Labour, in a deliberate effort to squeeze out and marginalise the SNP. He derided claims by Alex Salmond, the SNP leader and first minister, that his party could take 20 seats at the election – a prediction undermined by a recent drop in opinion poll ratings for the SNP. "So let me say this to Alex Salmond – this election that's coming ... it will be a British general election," he said. "It's about the future this United Kingdom must build together. It's not about you and your separatist agenda. "And though we don't know what will happen in this election – what the outcome will be, who will form the next government, there is one thing that is absolutely, 100% guaranteed: Alex, it will not be you." Lamont said local Lib Dem voters were deserting Moore and voting Tory because they wanted to punish Labour. "We're now seeing tactical voting against the Labour government," he said. The Conservative focus on this small list of target seats has renewed questions about their reliance on its multimillionaire donors, including the party treasurer Lord Ashcroft, who is thought to have given at least £5m to the party – money that has been heavily directed towards key Tory target seats. Michael Gove, the Tory frontbench spokesman on children, schools and family at Westminster, failed to dampen speculation that Ashcroft was still non-domiciled for tax purposes, despite promising in 2000 that he would move back to Britain and become a UK taxpayer after entering the House of Lords. Interviewed on BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland, Gove was pressed three times to confirm that Ashcroft was now resident in the UK, but refused to answer the question. "I know that the companies that he runs in this country pay tax in this country," he said. "The critical thing is that we've said, if we win the general election we will introduce a law that nobody can sit in the House of Commons or the House of Lords and be a British legislator and be non-domiciled for tax purposes." Scottish Tories refused to confirm whether Ashcroft's donations had funded their constituency campaigns. It is thought, however, that local campaigns have been funded directly by Lord Laidlaw, the multi-millionaire Scottish businessman who became the Conservative's largest donor in 2007 with a £3m gift. However, Laidlaw stopped funding the Tories last year in a dispute over his tax status.