In the early days of devolution, posh, bourgeois Scotland had a problem. How were they to deal with this interloper, this disruption to the seemingly settled order? Perhaps they should simply ignore it in the hope that it would mostly operate below stairs. Let me stress I am not talking here about formal Tory Scotland. Yes, the Tories had opposed devolution. In reality, though, they gave up that battle before the referendum, leaving the No campaign to be run by Brian Monteith (now an MSP), with occasional scrutiny from a grandee or two. The Tories knew they had to change and quickly in order to survive at all in the new politics. The only question was the extent of that change. Should they seek to contain the settlement, to act as a brake upon further devolution? Or should they ride point, pushing for a more radical transfer of power including fiscal autonomy: for a more extensive settlement within which they could credibly argue for a tax-cutting, free-enterprise programme? That discussion is still taking place. It is the real cause of the bout of introspection which afflicted the Scottish Conservatives in the aftermath of their relatively poor UK general election result in 2005.