Sometimes it’s not a pleasant task to say ‘Hello, I’m a Tory’ Knocking a door to say ‘I’m a Tory’ isn’t a pleasant task

The modern Scottish Conservative Party is nearly a hundred years old. As 1912 drew to a close, the old Conservatives merged with Liberal unionists to form a party organisation called, simply, the Unionist Party, a reference to Ireland rather than Scotland. This endured until 1965, when Edward Heath initiated a name change, after which it became known as the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party.

So, as the party approaches its centenary year, Murdo Fraser is effectively proposing to disband a once-formidable electoral force and start afresh.

It is an incredibly risky move. Scottish Conservatives are not renowned for all-or-nothing political gambles.

But that is precisely what it is – a gamble. The Conservatives have not had a good hand to play in nearly 15 years, so Mr Fraser and his supporters clearly believe they have nothing to lose in going for broke. It could go one of two ways, either consigning Scotland’s centre-right to the history books, or constituting a game-changer, the point at which its fortunes began to improve. It would be, if all goes to plan, their Clause IV moment.

It does, however, create problems for the other declared candidates, Jackson Carlaw and Ruth Davidson. Although Mr Carlaw’s anti-“appeasement” strategy may appeal more to a certain kind of Tory activist, he now looks stranded in 1980s-ville as a result of Mr Fraser’s pitch. How can Ms Davidson possibly hope to present herself as the “change” candidate now that her main opponent has proposed every conceivable “change”?

Changing the party’s name is not a new idea, and I imagine many Scottish Tory activists have an emotional attachment to the name Conservative and won’t like giving it up.

That said, there were similar grumblings back in 1965 and they were soon forgotten. The name of a party does not necessarily win or lose it votes. In 1955, for example, the Unionists got the majority of votes in Scotland; its fortunes subsequently waned, then in 1979 the Scottish Conservatives bounced back to win nearly a third of the vote. A radical reconstitution could do the current party a lot of good. In many parts of Scotland it cannot be a pleasant task knocking on someone’s door and saying: “Hello, I’m from the Conservative Party”. A change of name, logo and perhaps even party colour, would remove that stigma overnight. It would also neutralise some long-standing political attacks: that the Tories aren’t Scottish enough, take their orders from London, and so on.

However, it will also remove a brand supported by 13 per cent of Scots, although that figure tells its own story.

Mr Fraser (rightly) wants to avoid a lengthy debate about what the party should call itself should he be elected leader. I reckon the words “Conservative” and “Unionist” have outlived their usefulness; in the past I’ve suggested the Scottish Progressive Party, or Scottish Progressives for short, a name of which I am now even more convinced.

For that to work, the party needs to be genuinely “progressive” in other respects. Some senior UK Tories have dismissed the “Fraser plan” as little more than a PR-style rebranding exercise. If that were all Mr Fraser was proposing it would be a fair criticism, but he has indicated a long-overdue shift in strategy on “financial devolution”, while hinting at a radical and – in Mr Fraser’s own terminology – “progressive” shift in wider policy.

The crucial question is will it work? Not, I suspect, in the short term. In order to convince the electorate that this is indeed “a new dawn”, Mr Fraser and his supporters face a long, hard slog.

If a new party simply ends up as the same MSPs, councillors, financial backers and foot soldiers labouring under a different name, then all will have been in vain. What it needs are new elected representatives, new high-profile backers, and new voters, to make any difference.

So unless Mr Fraser pulls that off, then the inevitable charge will be that if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it is in fact a duck. And not only that, but the same “old Tory” duck.

It is the first time in living memory the Scottish Conservative Party has had such a comprehensive debate about its leadership, branding and strategy. This can only be good, not just for the party, but also for Scottish politics.

l David Torrance is editing a book on the Scottish Conservative Party for Edinburgh University Press, and is author of We in Scotland – Thatcherism in a Cold Climate