LAST WEEK I upset a few people chomping on their Special K, or savouring their bio-yogurt (never cornflakes if you’re Edinburgh’s metropolitan elite).

I had the temerity to consider that a recent ComRes poll that showed the Scottish Conservative Party at an all time low of seven per cent just might be right. I only considered it mind; I didn’t actually say it was. Far more important, I argued, are polling trends – as single polls may turn out to be rogue. Still, I also pointed out some reasons why it could be a straw in the wind of what is yet to come, not least that ComRes put UKIP in double figures like other polls had in England.

The problem was that in this UK poll the Scottish sample base was only 181 when we would normally look for samples to be at least 500, even better, double that.

A few days later another poll came out, this time from YouGov, showing an incredulous 21 per cent on a sample of 180. I say incredulous for that is higher than what the Scottish Conservatives polled in the 1997 General election when there were eleven MPs, lots of activists (and fifteen years younger), loadsamoney and a growing economy. It has been a steady decline since (and that was already a steady decline then!)

I was reminded by another sceptic that YouGov once put the Scottish Tories at 28 per cent only for them to eventually manage a 16.9 per cent share. Still, what Ruth Davidson would give for 16.9 per cent now!

Clearly both polls cannot be right and there’s every possibility that both are wrong and the reality is the party is closer to its Holyrood share of 13.9/12.4 per cent in 2011, which was the lowest electoral result in its history.

So let me say for the record, if Ruth Davidson manages to arrest the seemingly inexorable decline and just keeps her party at 13 per cent she will have done more than David McLetchie or Annabel Goldie before her. She will have halted the obituaries, saved her own seat and maybe, just maybe, created a platform to start building upon again.

My sympathies being what they are I wish her well, but on this rare occasion my glass is not even half full, it is empty and thanks to the minimum alcohol pricing that she supports it’s unlikely to be filled up until she shows a change in direction.

I recall all of this to give some context to what I wish to discuss today, for I promised last week that I would look to what she might do as leader to give her and her followers some expectation of success rather than mere hope of it (with their fingers crossed).

Today Ruth Davidson makes a keynote speech, partly because she recognises (thankfully) that she has to do something to get herself and her party noticed and in its timing because it’s Burn’s Day and she wishes to emphasise her Scottishness. Her speech, in what has been trailed so far, is remarkably like the launch of Murdo Fraser’s campaign for leadership, for she accepts that the party has made mistakes, accepts to some degree that the Scottish public distrust and don’t like her party and even plays the hand that I have written about many times – that the Scottish Tories are seen as London’s party in Scotland rather than Scotland’s party in London.

I suspect there’s more of this self-flagellation to come, today’s talk may even become known as the Fifty Shades of Blue speech, seeking political release from the pursuit of painful contrition.

The problem though, is having recognised a number of faults what can Ruth Davidson offer as remedies? There are essentially two components that strike me as obvious, the first she has hinted at, and that is to become a truly Scottish Party – which is something thus far she has repudiated, but the God of reason loves a convert. I’ve written about that problem often, today I wish to turn to the second requirement – the need to find a niche in the market.

How does she stake out ground she can make her own, that she can nurture and from which she can begin to grow a vote share that more than eclipses the Tory electoral or polling figures? She needs to find a credo. Maybe by the time people read this article she will have beaten me to it, but it is a worthwhile exercise nonetheless for her record of enunciating a philosophy has not been her strength.

If you look at the prevailing consensus in Scotland, practically everywhere you turn, in the self-serving parliament, in the media that circles overhead around it, in the social research academia that live off it, and the fake charities that lobby it, there is nothing but rent-seeking, vote buying and regulatory obesity.

The solution to all of Scotland’s problems are either new bans, higher taxes or greater subsidies – often to be administered by detached government agencies that are accountable to know one. Scottish devolution has turned Scottish government into an Octopus on Speed – its whip-like tentacles are everywhere and are growing.

While David McLetchie was leader of the Scots Tories there was some degree of resistance to this Scottish dirigisme but when he resigned the defence of mildly liberal economics and social policies went with him.

Under Goldie the Tories fell into the trap whereby any saving that they could find in the Holyrood budget was fed back into the system (subsidies for town centres anyone?) rather than given back to the people as tax cuts. Scotland’s Conservatives really became unrecognisable from all the other parties, for all of them are conservative in that they wish to preserve the domination of the state in our lives. The difference is only a matter of degree (eg some being more centralist) so is it any surprise the public became attracted to the one party that stood out, that had a USP, Salmond’s nationalists?

What we have had from the SNP is yet more conservative socialism characterised by greater central control, more redistribution of wealth through further progressive taxation and subsidies for the professional middle classes to keep them sweet. The change from the Labour/Lib Dem coalition was almost seamless.

What this tells me is that as well as being truly Scottish the Conservative party has to stop being conservative in the ‘small c’ sense, it has to stop defending the status quo and needs to identify and appeal to the gap in the market – the need for a real liberal party in Scotland.

The Liberal Democrats gave up being liberal a long time ago, becoming instead populist court jesters that are no longer popular because they never were funny.

They certainly do not advocate liberal economics and are actually as likely to advocate a ban on personal behaviour or our lifestyle choices as members of Labour or the SNP. Indeed in the cauldron of Holyrood they would often seek to outbid them both.

Time and again I watched the late Donald Gorrie stand up and propose bans on this or that – and he was the man behind the entering into Scots Law of hate crime as an offence. There is no better example of how Scottish politics has turned on its head than a Liberal advocating that what people might think, never mind what they might say or do, should become a crime.

So there is an opening for a party to appeal to the people as a sort of Scottish Libertarian Party, seeking to defend freedom under the law (for libertarians are not anarchists, they believe devoutly in the role of laws, especially economic and social contracts), promising to reduce the size and the scope of the state, cutting off its tentacles so that people make their own choices and take responsibility for them.

Ruth Davidson is already known for advocating gay marriage, but that was hardly surprising. Better still would be to look to issues such as those raised by Euan McColm here two weeks ago and Ben Acheson here this week. Further, of all the laws and regulations passed by Holyrood that Conservatives voted against at the time, saying they would fail – and they since have – which ones are they promising to repeal? Silence.

There lies a rich seam.

A Libertarian Party would allow publicans to decide if they should allow smoking, under strict rules about maintaining air quality standards – just as coachbuilders adhere to for re-spraying cars or engineers do for welding. A Libertarian Party would seek to make government both limited and accountable, closing down most quangos by making them private trusts that bid for funds or returning them to government where the Ministers could have their collar felt if they screw up as advocated by Alison Payne.

But most of all a Libertarian Party would return the people’s money back to them. Recently a Scottish Conservative press release advocated the mutualisation of Scottish Water (good), but where as before under McLetchie that saving was recycled so that tax cuts could be proposed, instead under Davidson (as under Goldie) it is now recycled for infrastructure spending (bad). More vote buying, more rewards for the rent seekers.

I am of course flying a kite here. There will be no Libertarian Party in Scotland, or at least not one worthy of the name. But the Scottish Conservatives could do worse than being more liberal than the Liberal Democrats and less conservative than their opponents. They might even think of telling the Scottish people that if they really hate conservatives they should recognise the real conservatives amongst them.

That’s the political opportunity, and here’s a little thought to back it up. I ask you this, on a purely practical level if the public of Scotland was asked a) would you prefer more public spending or tax cuts? B) would you like to see drugs decriminalised? C) would you like to see the smoking ban amended to allow pubs licensed for smokers, and d) would you like a smaller government footprint – what would the answers be?

I would wager they would answer in favour of public spending, strict drug laws, an unreformed smoking ban and big government – they would be conservative. But I would also bet that those on the side of liberalism would, in every question, number far more than the 13 per cent the Tories last managed. Go figure.

There is a constituency for a truly Scottish liberal party and Ruth Davidson is currently the person best placed to create one. She can give it any name she likes but it has all the potential to be bigger than one of the four conservative parties that she happens to lead.

The last thing Scotland needs is another Conservative Party and until someone recognises and does something about it the Octopus will only keep squeezing the life out of us.