Conservative policy development in Scotland and Wales has, in recent years, been structured by the weak position of the parties in the two nations. The formation of the Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition on 10 May 2010 had many unanticipated by-products, not least the partial resolution of the dilemma of territorial politics faced by a Conservative Party nearly all of whose parliamentary strength comes from England. The addition of Liberal Democrat votes and MPs took the Coalition presence in Scotland to 35.6% of the vote and 12 seats out of 59, and in Wales to a healthy 46.2% and 11 seats out of 40. Conservatives in Wales contributed 26.1% of the vote and eight seats, a stronger surge than in England; but in Scotland the painful outcome of only one seat and 16.7% of the vote, less than a 1% increase from the 2005 general election, threw into relief the role and distinctiveness of the Conservative Party in Scottish politics. In Northern Ireland the Conservatives’ attempt to win seats in alliance with the Ulster Unionists failed. At these levels of support the party’s task is survival, in terms of its activist and voter base, and also of its capacity to generate distinctive ideas about policy. The scope for new Conservative policies authentically of the nations, and expressing divergences of circumstance and attitude from England, is the central focus of this chapter and forms part of any well-rounded appraisal of a party that claims unionism as a core belief.

The role of the Conservative Party in Scotland and Wales has been affected profoundly by the collapse in the size of the constituency wanting no devolved legislative body at all, the Conservatives’ position up to 1997. Polling evidence suggests that in Scotland this group declined from 17% in 1997 to 10% in 2007 (40% among Conservative voters in 2007) (Curtice, 2008, p 40), and in Wales from 37% in 1997 to 14% in 2009 (All-Wales Convention, 2009, p 85). Although there is a residual anti-devolution vote to be mobilised, much of it still goes to Labour, and there is little political potential for the Conservatives in being a refusenik party on the constitutional issue.