Cameron's Glasgow South West candidate, Heather MacLeod quits over party’s ‘nest of vipers’

Only the day after David Cameron admitted he does not expect the Conservatives to do well in Scotland, one of his leading candidates has quit the Conservative Party.

In today's Sunday Herald Heather MacLeod, who has resigned after a “bitter and bloody” feud with fellow Conservatives, said she felt “complete and utter disgust” with a section of the Scottish Conservatives.

She also accused the Scottish party of failing to match leader David Cameron’s progress and said she had concerns about an allegedly inappropriate relationship between two senior Tories.

Heather MacLeod’s problems with a group of fellow party members started last year when she and another Conservative candidate, Fiona Houston, set up the Social Justice Scotland think tank.


The pair then fell out over the organisation’s direction, and the row was made even worse when some fellow Conservatives raised questions about Heather MacLeod’s financial background.

According to Companies House, Mrs MacLeod has been a director of companies that have gone into liquidation.

However, Mrs MacLeod has told the Sunday Herald that a “nest of vipers” in the party had tried to “discredit” her to seize control of Social Justice Scotland.

The row is a blow for a party whose senior strategists expect to win only a handful of Scottish seats at the election.

One senior Conservative source said he feared Mr Cameron could be deprived of an overall majority due to the under-peformance of the Scottish Conservatives.

As I said yesterday though, when the leader, David Cameron and senior Conservatives like Tim Montgomerie don't believe in you, then it doesn't leave many who do and certainly the Scottish voters may well just turn their back on the Scottish Conservatives.

The Liberal Democrats have more MPs in Scotland than the Conservatives and SNP combined.

With just one MP in Scotland (who is at risk anyhow from David Steel's daughter, Catriona Bhatia for the Liberal Democrats), Cameron's Conservatives are in fact the fourth party in Scottish Westminster politics and their boss, David Cameron has finally admitted that he doesn't actually think they will win many more seats in this election.
 
With daily catastrophies such as this story hitting the Scottish Conservatives it is hardly surprising they won't win many seats here in Scotland.

I will leave the final word to Heather MacLeod;

“The Scottish party really needs to look at itself. It needs to understand why it is not electable. It is becoming more reactionary, rather than learning about how to become more successful.


“The party down south has moved on, but the Scottish Tories have not.”