Be wary of making crude demographic assumptions, btw. There were some very working class areas where Yes badly underperformed expectations (i.e. it wasn't just the poor results in rural Scotland). Historically Presbyterian working class areas perhaps? Admittedly you'd need to look at detailed figures that don't exist to be sure. Still, I wonder whether some of the patterns in general were heavily cultural?
Ramble ramble, five thirty am.
If I were a Karl Rove type advising the Scottish Tories right now, I would advise them to 1. disaffiliate themselves from the national party, 2. change their name back to "Scottish Unionist Party" and make their new emblem a crown superimposed upon a union flag (or some sort of obviously-unionist symbol if the electoral commission wouldn't allow that), 3. do whatever it takes to get a well-known Labour figure to defect to the party, and immediately make him/her the party leader. Have one of your upper-class twit friends offer them a seven-figure job if necessary.
New message: We are against endless referenda. We are the only ones willing to deal with crime. Rah-rah The Union. Why isn't Labour council X flying Our Flag? (All the attacks in this vein should be on Labour; goal is to associate them with being unpatriotic and bait them into echoing nationalist rhetoric).
Rah-rah Our Soldiers. Require banks to give an equal bonus to our soldiers for each bonus they give to their bankers. Boo-hiss multinationals with their poisonous GMOs and not paying any taxes and putting Granny's corner store out of business. Tesco out of Scotland, McDonalds out of Scotland, Starbucks out of Scotland. (Word-salad populism works, especially if you can bait the other parties into defending bankers against soldiers and Tesco against Granny's corner store).
We demand a written constitution: ban privatizing or cutting the NHS, ban cutting benefits to soldiers, no privatizing pensions, only allow a progressive income tax, independence and monarchy abolition only via referenda that can be held once every 30 years; 2/3rds must vote yes on at least 50% turnout. Why do the other parties want to leave our welfare state vulnerable and subject us to endless referenda? (It's not like there's a chance in hell that the Scottish NHS or pensions are going to be privatized or they'll have a flat income tax, so it's a no-risk way of countering negative perceptions and appearing to shift dramatically to the left without much in the way of real policy concessions).
Stay on-message: For gay marriage, pro-choice, take as vague a position as possible on immigration and the EU. A little right-wing populism goes a long way, and those social issues are ones where it's very easy to make a gaffe that puts oneself in a very deep hole very fast.
If possible, never join government. Next time there's a recession, vote against any and all austerity measures.
...
Of course, the Scottish Tory leadership would never go for my suggestions, and possibly not the membership either. And it might be that it would just alienate the current Tory voters without attracting enough new ones to make up for it. But I think something like I'm saying
is worth a shot; it's how they should have been positioning the party a long time ago. Unionism is an ideology that has traction amongst a good portion of the public there, but economic liberalism does not.
