PR could create a gold/blue/green coalition in Scotland.

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With the UK's only female leader of a major party in Holyrood, Annabel Goldie, things appear, tentatively, to be on the up for the Tories in Scotland.

While the Tories have no hope of forming a majority government in Scotland, they have everything to play for as potential "kingmakers" for a continental-style coalition - even if that has meant swallowing their instinctive distaste for both Europe, devolution and PR.

Having come to an accommodation with the idea of a parliament, and with the face-saving proportional representation, today's symbolic holding of the shadow cabinet in Edinburgh could suggest renewed hope for Scotland's Tories.

Coming third, ahead of the Liberal Democrats, as they did in 2003 (albeit by only one seat) would be an achievement.

And it would raise the seemingly implausible possibility of a gold/blue coalition between the SNP and the Tories, possibly gold/blue/green if the Green party come on board, to displace the current ruling Lab/Lib Dem coalition.

Although the SNP has gone on the record to rule it out, stranger things have happened - the Tories and Greens share power on Leeds council, for example.

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