Revising The Act of Union, 1707. If there is to be any chance of reviving the Conservative cause in Scotland, Murdo Fraser’s reasoning needs to be developed. Simply dropping the Party’s current title will persuade few, if any, beyond current members and supporters to join. Presently the Scottish National Party can and do exploit the underlying sense of Scots identity virtually unchallenged, since the other three parties are all branded – unfairly, perhaps – as Unionists, (meaning upholders of the Act of Union, with all its ramifications). So far no one outside the S.N.P. appears to have thought of redefining the Union. A modern, (quasi-federal), union need not be encumbered with such impediments as membership of the archaically termed Imperial Parliament, “devolution,” the West Lothian Question, the Barnett Formula and all the illogicalities and anomalies of adapting a unitary system to an association of four self-governing entities. Other forms of arrangement are better suited to the political and economic realities of C21. A truly Scots Conservative party, firmly based on responsible self-government, would transform the political context North of the Border. That is something that the declining post-Thatcherite remnant could never achieve. Michael B. Buck. 04 / 10 / 2011.