- Location
- NYC (né Falkirk)
- Pronouns
- he/him
Leaders of the Unionist Party (the "Yoons")
Sir John Gilmour (1965-1967) [1]
Sir John MacLeod (1967-1970) [2]
Gordon Campbell (1970-1972) [3]
Alick Buchanan-Smith (1972-1980) [4]
Malcolm Rifkind (1980-1985) [5]
Colin Mitchell (1985-1987) [6]
Lord James Douglas-Hamilton (1987-1994) [7]
Michael Forsyth (1995-2002) [8]
Brian Monteith (2002-2009) [9]
Murdo Fraser (2009-2014) [10]
Jo Swinson (2014-) [11]
[1] For a party that had won 40% of the vote and a third of seats at the 1964 general election, a decision to merge the Unionist Party in Scotland with the Conservative & Unionist Party of England and Wales must have seemed very odd indeed. It was certainly so to Ross & Cromarty MP Sir John MacLeod; technically elected as a Liberal & Conservative candidate, his campaigns against rural rail line closures in the Highlands spiralled into a greater campaign for the conservatives in Scotland to retain their autonomy from the party in London. This was given little attention by the Unionist MPs or the new Conservative leader Edward Heath, but when many Unionist Associations across Scotland supported MacLeod, the decision to merge the Scottish party was shelved. The same could not be said for MacLeod's former party the National Liberals, of which he was the closest they had to a representative north of the Tweed. The National Liberals would merge with the Unionists and Scotland and the Conservatives in England. As part of the reforms in the Unionist Party, vice chairman Sir John Gilmour, East Fife, was selected by the party's MPs to be their first leader. He did little with the role, and when Prime Minister Harold Wilson called a snap election in 1966 he did little to build a distinctly Scottish campaign. This cost the Unionists three seats, but there was little call to replace him as this may have been due to the sombre mood prevalent in the country due the World Cup in England. In 1967 he announced he was standing down, with only a token opposition from Sir Fitzroy Maclean, Bute & North Ayrshire, Sir John MacLeod would be elected as the Party's second leader.
[2] The rebellious backbench MP and tweed designer would prove to be a constant annoyance to the Leader of the Opposition, not to the extent of the controversial Member for Wolverhampton South West, Enoch Powell, but a more lasting one. He was never sacked from the Shadow Cabinet (holding, like his predecessor the post of Shadow Scottish Secretary) like Powell was, though his public disagreements on policy as it effected Scotland did cause much speculation. The only time he appeared to support his English colleagues fully was over Heath's Declaration of Perth in support of Scottish devolution in 1968 - the increase in rail fares and closure of lines in the Highlands doing much to bring him round to the idea of some measure of self-government in Scotland. He did much to promote the idea of the Unionists as a separate organisation from the Conservatives in England, widely seen as costing Labour the Hamilton by-election by the narrowest of margins to the Unionist candidate - though the SNP claim their candidate splitting the vote from Labour was the real cause of this. The unexpected Conservative victory in the 1970 general election saw the Unionists gain four seats (two each at the expense of Labour and the Liberals, but losing their Hamilton by-election gain to the Labour Party); but MacLeod would play no part in the Labour government. Heath appointed someone who was more in tune with himself to the post of Scottish Secretary, causing MacLeod's resignation. The new Scottish Secretary was quickly acclaimed the new leader of the Unionist Party by the party's MPs.
[3] Gordon Campbell, Moray & Nairn would prove to be a transitional leader of the Unionist Party. Dedicated to seeing through the Prime Minister's ambition for British entry into the EEC, to this end he made preparations in the Scottish Office to accept a smaller national fishing fleet as a price of entry. He also fought against Heath's proposals to invest North Sea oil revenues into the Scottish economy. When his parliamentary colleagues in the Unionist Party got word of this, they threatened to vote down the EEC bill as it currently stood. Heath and the government went back to the drawing board. For his part, Gordon Campbell quickly resigned as both Scottish Secretary and Party leader. After another nine months of discussion the government was able to negotiate an opt-out off the Common Fisheries Policy for the UK and the other applicants (Denmark, Ireland, and Norway) for a temporary but undetermined period. The Unionist MPs would elect a new leader, and in Heath's snap election in February 1974 over the issues of industrial strife Gordon Campbell would one of only two Unionist MPs to lose their seats (Campbell would lose to Winnie Ewing of the SNP, the other Unionist MP to lose his seat was Russell Fairgreave, Roxburgh, Selkirk & Peebles to the previous MP for that constituency, David Steel).
[4] The 1970s would prove a time of change in Scotland Scotland. The 1974 election saw the Scottish National Party return their largest ever number of MPs to Westminster, both of their MPs being devoted to devolution as a stepping stone to devolution. The Unionists and Conservatives were also in favour of devolution, as were their coalition partners in the Liberal Party. The man to see the troubled Scotland & Wales Bill (the Welsh nationalist Plaid Cymru had returned 3 MPs in 1974) through from the Scottish Office was Alick Buchanan-Smith - a devotee of devolution in the Unionist Party. There were those within the party who were opposed to devolution, especially at a time when Unionism was seemingly under threat over in Northern Ireland as the violence increased during the decade. For this reason the model of devolution in Northern Ireland was not considered as a model for Scottish devolution. Buchanan-Smith would help steer the devolution proposals through Westminster with support of the Liberals, Nationalists, and pro-devolution Labour MPs; and it would be confirmed narrowly by a referendum with 51% of the vote. Under the provisions of the Royal Commission on the Electoral Reform, elections would be held to the new Assembly under the single-transferable vote of proportional representation (the proposals for open-list proportional representation for European elections was also passed into law, whilst the proposals for mixed-member semi-proportional representation for Westminster would be quietly ignored). Labour had taken a distinctly anti-devolution and anti-EEC platform by the end of the decade under Peter Shore; and by the time of the 1979 general election, which saw the Unionists return 22 MPs they were back in government in London and in government in Edinburgh. Pro-devolution MPs in the Labour Party would keep the government from making nay moves to abolish the Assembly, but it quickly became a rubber stamp for the Westminster government. Buchanan-Smith would resign as leader in 1980, making way for a new leader similarly inclined to devolution.
[5] In some ways Malcolm Rifkind was the busiest Unionist Leader before or since; he wore three hats during his tenure - leader of the Unionist Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Scottish Assembly, and Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland in Westminster. The still rife violence in Northern Ireland, increasing trade union unrest, the question of the EEC, and Labour Party infighting between various factions made for a troubled time for Shore's government, even with North Sea oil revenue starting to come ashore. By 1984 the Conservatives had returned to power under Peter Walker, although they were still in Opposition in Calton Hill. An attempt, completely unrelated to any brief of Rifkind's, to end the violence in Northern Ireland would spell the end of his leadership. The Anglo-Irish Agreement, dating back all the way to the tail end of the Heath government, would give the Republic of Ireland an advisory role in the province and would pave the way for the return of devolution. It was also voraciously opposed by the Unionist community in Northern Ireland, and there was a lot of sympathy amongst certain sectors of Scottish society, especially in the Unionist Party and its voters, for their counterparts across the Sheuch. Rifkind refused to countenance any suggestion that any Unionist MPs resign their seats in protest as the unionist MPs from Northern Ireland had done - especially when all of them doing it would cost the Walker government its majority. There would soon be calls for a leadership election to be held on the matter, which Rifkind would go on to lose in a schock result in the first election open to all members of the party. Before any Unionist MPs could resign and reduce the government to a minority, the bill was withdrawn from consideration. The government of the Republic of Ireland was incensed, the violence in Northern Ireland would still not end, but Peter Walker kept his majority. Rifkind would also remain as Scottish Secretary, and Leader of the Opposition in Edinburgh, the new leader not holding a seat in the devolved government.
[6] Someone nicknamed Mad Mitch in most circumstances might not have been a sensible choice to lead a political party; as they proved to be when Colin "Mad Mitch of Aden" Mitchell became leader of the Unionist Party largely on the fact he was opposed to the Anglo-Irish Agreement. No leader had done so little with the role since Sir John Gilmour, and none had been so outspoken in his beliefs, particularly when opposed to the Conservative Party, since Sir John MacLeod. He also had no time for the Scottish Assembly; it is an apocryphal tale that he coined the nickname "porridge parliament" for the Edinburgh-based body, but the sentiment is almost certainly his. His leadership was at a time when support for the Assembly before or since it was created was at its lowest ebb. This was in part due to Mitchell's ambivalence, in part due to the Conservatives not devolving further powers to a Labour government in Edinburgh, and in part due to the Labour government of Donald Dewar preferring to criticise the Westminster government than use their own powers. His end would come when he appeared unsympathetic in interviews to the Lockerbie disaster in 1987, and a leadership challenge had been launched. Rifkind had refused to stand again, instead suggesting that the new leader should be taken from the Assembly Members rather than the MPs. Rifkind would step down as Leader of the Opposition following the leadership election, but would remain as Scottish Secretary until the return of the Labour Party to government in Westminster under Neil Kinnock in 1989.
[7] Lord James Douglas-Hamilton was elected leader of the Unionist Party with only token opposition from what had become nicknamed the party's Orange wing, a small but vocal group within the party's elected officials. He would serve as Leader of the Opposition to Donald Dewar's Labour/Liberal coalition for the entirety of his unremarkable tenure. The centre of gravity within the Unionists had moved to Calton from Westminster, and when he resigned from Parliament, the Assembly, and as leader when he inherited and Earldom in 1994, he would be replaced by someone from the Assembly. The changes of the Kinnock government to not allow for double jobbing would serve keep the Unionist Party leadership based in Edinburgh.
[8] Becoming the first Unionist First Secretary of Scotland fell largely by accident to Michael Forsyth. Labour had been in government since the first elections in 1979, had won each successive election in 1983, 1987, 1991, and 1995, but by 1999 the people of Scotland were ready for change. Disatisfaction with the Labour governments in both Edinburgh and London (the latter led since 1996 by Bryan Gould), including the controversial climate change legislation limiting the use of coal would lead to the Unionists becoming the largest party in the Scottish Assembly since its inception. Their minority government would receive supply and confidence from the third largest party in the Assembly, John Swinney's Nationalists, in exchange for promised further powers to be devolved when the Conservatives won the next United Kingdom general election (now taken as a given with the problems the Gould government were facing). In many ways, Forsyth's programme of monetarist government reforms were a pilot program for what Conservative leader Michael Portillo was proposing for the whole United Kingdom. The initial success of these reforms, backed by a reduction in taxes in Scotland, convinced the Westminster government to push ahead with them following the 2002 election. Forsyth himself would resign from the Assembly and as leader to contest the Stirling constituency in the general election, being elected with a comfortable margin.
[9] The honeymoon for what was quickly called Portilloism was over very quickly. The crash in the global economy heralded by the United States finally reaping the whirlwind of President Reagan's reforms meant taxes could no longer be slashed as the carrot to go with the stick of cuts in funding. A tabloid revealing a homosexual affair Portillo had at university brought further scandal, but did cause the resignation of Alan Duncan - coming out in the process - to fight a by-election on equal age of consent for homosexual sex. The eventual legislation for this, and for the final end to the violence in Northern Ireland would be the lasting achievements of the Portillo Ministry. For Forsyth's replacement as First Secretary and leader of the Unionist Party, a successful election in 2003 would be the worst thing that would ever happen to his career. In an eventual desperate attempt to turn around the worsening economic situation, a reform of local government taxation at a fixed price per adult resident and cuts in benefits including penalties for "under-occupancy" brought riots in several Scottish towns and cities. By 2006 the Nationalists had completely withdrawn support from Monteith's government, though they would limp on in autopilot until 2007. The Conservatives were replaced in Westminster by the Labour Party under Robin Cook, and in Calton Hill the Unionists were replaced by the same party under Wendy Alexander. The Unionists suffered the humiliation of coming third for the first time in a Scottish election behind the Nationalists in terms of both seats and votes (though they remained the second largest party in the Westminster elections held the same year). With the party in disarray Monteith was convinced to remain in place until a transition could be smoothly arranged. Both Monteith and Forsyth had other plans though, both began to make moves to integrate the Unionist Party with the Conservatives in order to present a united opposition to Labour in both legislatures. This trend caused concern in many quarters in the party, and at the 2009 conference a challenge to Monteith by backbencher Murdo Fraser yielded the surprising result of losing to the former Energy Minister.
[10] All talk of a merger with the Conservatives was dropped, and instead Fraser strove to appeal to the "tartan" aspect of Unionist voters. Calling for a return to the "Ane Naition" brand of Unionism. This would pay dividends by the time of the 2011 Assembly elections, where the Unionists would return to being the Official Opposition. His long-term goal as leader was to keep the Unionists as separate from the Conservatives, now under David Davis, as the Ulster Unionists were. He also heralded a change in Unionist leadership attitudes to Europe, being pro-continued membership in the EEC. This did not extend of course to supporting entry into the European Union, which remained a fringe movement in Scotland more so than the rest of the UK. By 2014 he had announced he was stepping down as leader in order to give his successor a clear run at the 2015 Assembly election.
[11] At the age of thirty-four one of the youngest leaders of any major party in Europe, Jo Swinson would break more records when she became one of the youngest leaders of any legislature in the world. She, along with her inner circle of what has been called the "New Unionism", have served to elevate the party to their greatest success at Westminster in the 2017 General Election since 1955. Robin Cook's removal and subsequent death had done a lot to demonise the Labour Party under David Miliband in Scotland. It was in this atmosphere that the Unionists would top the poll and win the most seats in Scotland in the general election, and the SNP under Charles Kennedy would win the most seats they had ever managed in their history returning seven MPs (mainly at the expense of Labour). In Coalition with the Liberals and still enjoying high approval ratings, the Unionists are now the natural party of government in Scotland, risen from the ennui of the Monteith years. Polls point to them potentially winning a majority at the next Assembly election due in 2019, which would be an impressive feat under STV.
Sir John Gilmour (1965-1967) [1]
Sir John MacLeod (1967-1970) [2]
Gordon Campbell (1970-1972) [3]
Alick Buchanan-Smith (1972-1980) [4]
Malcolm Rifkind (1980-1985) [5]
Colin Mitchell (1985-1987) [6]
Lord James Douglas-Hamilton (1987-1994) [7]
Michael Forsyth (1995-2002) [8]
Brian Monteith (2002-2009) [9]
Murdo Fraser (2009-2014) [10]
Jo Swinson (2014-) [11]
[1] For a party that had won 40% of the vote and a third of seats at the 1964 general election, a decision to merge the Unionist Party in Scotland with the Conservative & Unionist Party of England and Wales must have seemed very odd indeed. It was certainly so to Ross & Cromarty MP Sir John MacLeod; technically elected as a Liberal & Conservative candidate, his campaigns against rural rail line closures in the Highlands spiralled into a greater campaign for the conservatives in Scotland to retain their autonomy from the party in London. This was given little attention by the Unionist MPs or the new Conservative leader Edward Heath, but when many Unionist Associations across Scotland supported MacLeod, the decision to merge the Scottish party was shelved. The same could not be said for MacLeod's former party the National Liberals, of which he was the closest they had to a representative north of the Tweed. The National Liberals would merge with the Unionists and Scotland and the Conservatives in England. As part of the reforms in the Unionist Party, vice chairman Sir John Gilmour, East Fife, was selected by the party's MPs to be their first leader. He did little with the role, and when Prime Minister Harold Wilson called a snap election in 1966 he did little to build a distinctly Scottish campaign. This cost the Unionists three seats, but there was little call to replace him as this may have been due to the sombre mood prevalent in the country due the World Cup in England. In 1967 he announced he was standing down, with only a token opposition from Sir Fitzroy Maclean, Bute & North Ayrshire, Sir John MacLeod would be elected as the Party's second leader.
[2] The rebellious backbench MP and tweed designer would prove to be a constant annoyance to the Leader of the Opposition, not to the extent of the controversial Member for Wolverhampton South West, Enoch Powell, but a more lasting one. He was never sacked from the Shadow Cabinet (holding, like his predecessor the post of Shadow Scottish Secretary) like Powell was, though his public disagreements on policy as it effected Scotland did cause much speculation. The only time he appeared to support his English colleagues fully was over Heath's Declaration of Perth in support of Scottish devolution in 1968 - the increase in rail fares and closure of lines in the Highlands doing much to bring him round to the idea of some measure of self-government in Scotland. He did much to promote the idea of the Unionists as a separate organisation from the Conservatives in England, widely seen as costing Labour the Hamilton by-election by the narrowest of margins to the Unionist candidate - though the SNP claim their candidate splitting the vote from Labour was the real cause of this. The unexpected Conservative victory in the 1970 general election saw the Unionists gain four seats (two each at the expense of Labour and the Liberals, but losing their Hamilton by-election gain to the Labour Party); but MacLeod would play no part in the Labour government. Heath appointed someone who was more in tune with himself to the post of Scottish Secretary, causing MacLeod's resignation. The new Scottish Secretary was quickly acclaimed the new leader of the Unionist Party by the party's MPs.
[3] Gordon Campbell, Moray & Nairn would prove to be a transitional leader of the Unionist Party. Dedicated to seeing through the Prime Minister's ambition for British entry into the EEC, to this end he made preparations in the Scottish Office to accept a smaller national fishing fleet as a price of entry. He also fought against Heath's proposals to invest North Sea oil revenues into the Scottish economy. When his parliamentary colleagues in the Unionist Party got word of this, they threatened to vote down the EEC bill as it currently stood. Heath and the government went back to the drawing board. For his part, Gordon Campbell quickly resigned as both Scottish Secretary and Party leader. After another nine months of discussion the government was able to negotiate an opt-out off the Common Fisheries Policy for the UK and the other applicants (Denmark, Ireland, and Norway) for a temporary but undetermined period. The Unionist MPs would elect a new leader, and in Heath's snap election in February 1974 over the issues of industrial strife Gordon Campbell would one of only two Unionist MPs to lose their seats (Campbell would lose to Winnie Ewing of the SNP, the other Unionist MP to lose his seat was Russell Fairgreave, Roxburgh, Selkirk & Peebles to the previous MP for that constituency, David Steel).
[4] The 1970s would prove a time of change in Scotland Scotland. The 1974 election saw the Scottish National Party return their largest ever number of MPs to Westminster, both of their MPs being devoted to devolution as a stepping stone to devolution. The Unionists and Conservatives were also in favour of devolution, as were their coalition partners in the Liberal Party. The man to see the troubled Scotland & Wales Bill (the Welsh nationalist Plaid Cymru had returned 3 MPs in 1974) through from the Scottish Office was Alick Buchanan-Smith - a devotee of devolution in the Unionist Party. There were those within the party who were opposed to devolution, especially at a time when Unionism was seemingly under threat over in Northern Ireland as the violence increased during the decade. For this reason the model of devolution in Northern Ireland was not considered as a model for Scottish devolution. Buchanan-Smith would help steer the devolution proposals through Westminster with support of the Liberals, Nationalists, and pro-devolution Labour MPs; and it would be confirmed narrowly by a referendum with 51% of the vote. Under the provisions of the Royal Commission on the Electoral Reform, elections would be held to the new Assembly under the single-transferable vote of proportional representation (the proposals for open-list proportional representation for European elections was also passed into law, whilst the proposals for mixed-member semi-proportional representation for Westminster would be quietly ignored). Labour had taken a distinctly anti-devolution and anti-EEC platform by the end of the decade under Peter Shore; and by the time of the 1979 general election, which saw the Unionists return 22 MPs they were back in government in London and in government in Edinburgh. Pro-devolution MPs in the Labour Party would keep the government from making nay moves to abolish the Assembly, but it quickly became a rubber stamp for the Westminster government. Buchanan-Smith would resign as leader in 1980, making way for a new leader similarly inclined to devolution.
[5] In some ways Malcolm Rifkind was the busiest Unionist Leader before or since; he wore three hats during his tenure - leader of the Unionist Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Scottish Assembly, and Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland in Westminster. The still rife violence in Northern Ireland, increasing trade union unrest, the question of the EEC, and Labour Party infighting between various factions made for a troubled time for Shore's government, even with North Sea oil revenue starting to come ashore. By 1984 the Conservatives had returned to power under Peter Walker, although they were still in Opposition in Calton Hill. An attempt, completely unrelated to any brief of Rifkind's, to end the violence in Northern Ireland would spell the end of his leadership. The Anglo-Irish Agreement, dating back all the way to the tail end of the Heath government, would give the Republic of Ireland an advisory role in the province and would pave the way for the return of devolution. It was also voraciously opposed by the Unionist community in Northern Ireland, and there was a lot of sympathy amongst certain sectors of Scottish society, especially in the Unionist Party and its voters, for their counterparts across the Sheuch. Rifkind refused to countenance any suggestion that any Unionist MPs resign their seats in protest as the unionist MPs from Northern Ireland had done - especially when all of them doing it would cost the Walker government its majority. There would soon be calls for a leadership election to be held on the matter, which Rifkind would go on to lose in a schock result in the first election open to all members of the party. Before any Unionist MPs could resign and reduce the government to a minority, the bill was withdrawn from consideration. The government of the Republic of Ireland was incensed, the violence in Northern Ireland would still not end, but Peter Walker kept his majority. Rifkind would also remain as Scottish Secretary, and Leader of the Opposition in Edinburgh, the new leader not holding a seat in the devolved government.
[6] Someone nicknamed Mad Mitch in most circumstances might not have been a sensible choice to lead a political party; as they proved to be when Colin "Mad Mitch of Aden" Mitchell became leader of the Unionist Party largely on the fact he was opposed to the Anglo-Irish Agreement. No leader had done so little with the role since Sir John Gilmour, and none had been so outspoken in his beliefs, particularly when opposed to the Conservative Party, since Sir John MacLeod. He also had no time for the Scottish Assembly; it is an apocryphal tale that he coined the nickname "porridge parliament" for the Edinburgh-based body, but the sentiment is almost certainly his. His leadership was at a time when support for the Assembly before or since it was created was at its lowest ebb. This was in part due to Mitchell's ambivalence, in part due to the Conservatives not devolving further powers to a Labour government in Edinburgh, and in part due to the Labour government of Donald Dewar preferring to criticise the Westminster government than use their own powers. His end would come when he appeared unsympathetic in interviews to the Lockerbie disaster in 1987, and a leadership challenge had been launched. Rifkind had refused to stand again, instead suggesting that the new leader should be taken from the Assembly Members rather than the MPs. Rifkind would step down as Leader of the Opposition following the leadership election, but would remain as Scottish Secretary until the return of the Labour Party to government in Westminster under Neil Kinnock in 1989.
[7] Lord James Douglas-Hamilton was elected leader of the Unionist Party with only token opposition from what had become nicknamed the party's Orange wing, a small but vocal group within the party's elected officials. He would serve as Leader of the Opposition to Donald Dewar's Labour/Liberal coalition for the entirety of his unremarkable tenure. The centre of gravity within the Unionists had moved to Calton from Westminster, and when he resigned from Parliament, the Assembly, and as leader when he inherited and Earldom in 1994, he would be replaced by someone from the Assembly. The changes of the Kinnock government to not allow for double jobbing would serve keep the Unionist Party leadership based in Edinburgh.
[8] Becoming the first Unionist First Secretary of Scotland fell largely by accident to Michael Forsyth. Labour had been in government since the first elections in 1979, had won each successive election in 1983, 1987, 1991, and 1995, but by 1999 the people of Scotland were ready for change. Disatisfaction with the Labour governments in both Edinburgh and London (the latter led since 1996 by Bryan Gould), including the controversial climate change legislation limiting the use of coal would lead to the Unionists becoming the largest party in the Scottish Assembly since its inception. Their minority government would receive supply and confidence from the third largest party in the Assembly, John Swinney's Nationalists, in exchange for promised further powers to be devolved when the Conservatives won the next United Kingdom general election (now taken as a given with the problems the Gould government were facing). In many ways, Forsyth's programme of monetarist government reforms were a pilot program for what Conservative leader Michael Portillo was proposing for the whole United Kingdom. The initial success of these reforms, backed by a reduction in taxes in Scotland, convinced the Westminster government to push ahead with them following the 2002 election. Forsyth himself would resign from the Assembly and as leader to contest the Stirling constituency in the general election, being elected with a comfortable margin.
[9] The honeymoon for what was quickly called Portilloism was over very quickly. The crash in the global economy heralded by the United States finally reaping the whirlwind of President Reagan's reforms meant taxes could no longer be slashed as the carrot to go with the stick of cuts in funding. A tabloid revealing a homosexual affair Portillo had at university brought further scandal, but did cause the resignation of Alan Duncan - coming out in the process - to fight a by-election on equal age of consent for homosexual sex. The eventual legislation for this, and for the final end to the violence in Northern Ireland would be the lasting achievements of the Portillo Ministry. For Forsyth's replacement as First Secretary and leader of the Unionist Party, a successful election in 2003 would be the worst thing that would ever happen to his career. In an eventual desperate attempt to turn around the worsening economic situation, a reform of local government taxation at a fixed price per adult resident and cuts in benefits including penalties for "under-occupancy" brought riots in several Scottish towns and cities. By 2006 the Nationalists had completely withdrawn support from Monteith's government, though they would limp on in autopilot until 2007. The Conservatives were replaced in Westminster by the Labour Party under Robin Cook, and in Calton Hill the Unionists were replaced by the same party under Wendy Alexander. The Unionists suffered the humiliation of coming third for the first time in a Scottish election behind the Nationalists in terms of both seats and votes (though they remained the second largest party in the Westminster elections held the same year). With the party in disarray Monteith was convinced to remain in place until a transition could be smoothly arranged. Both Monteith and Forsyth had other plans though, both began to make moves to integrate the Unionist Party with the Conservatives in order to present a united opposition to Labour in both legislatures. This trend caused concern in many quarters in the party, and at the 2009 conference a challenge to Monteith by backbencher Murdo Fraser yielded the surprising result of losing to the former Energy Minister.
[10] All talk of a merger with the Conservatives was dropped, and instead Fraser strove to appeal to the "tartan" aspect of Unionist voters. Calling for a return to the "Ane Naition" brand of Unionism. This would pay dividends by the time of the 2011 Assembly elections, where the Unionists would return to being the Official Opposition. His long-term goal as leader was to keep the Unionists as separate from the Conservatives, now under David Davis, as the Ulster Unionists were. He also heralded a change in Unionist leadership attitudes to Europe, being pro-continued membership in the EEC. This did not extend of course to supporting entry into the European Union, which remained a fringe movement in Scotland more so than the rest of the UK. By 2014 he had announced he was stepping down as leader in order to give his successor a clear run at the 2015 Assembly election.
[11] At the age of thirty-four one of the youngest leaders of any major party in Europe, Jo Swinson would break more records when she became one of the youngest leaders of any legislature in the world. She, along with her inner circle of what has been called the "New Unionism", have served to elevate the party to their greatest success at Westminster in the 2017 General Election since 1955. Robin Cook's removal and subsequent death had done a lot to demonise the Labour Party under David Miliband in Scotland. It was in this atmosphere that the Unionists would top the poll and win the most seats in Scotland in the general election, and the SNP under Charles Kennedy would win the most seats they had ever managed in their history returning seven MPs (mainly at the expense of Labour). In Coalition with the Liberals and still enjoying high approval ratings, the Unionists are now the natural party of government in Scotland, risen from the ennui of the Monteith years. Polls point to them potentially winning a majority at the next Assembly election due in 2019, which would be an impressive feat under STV.