Despite all the bluff and bluster at the launch of the Conservative campaign in the Glenrothes by-election nobody, surely not even the candidate, can think the party has an earthly chance of winning.

Even if the Labour and SNP candidates were both to fall under a the proverbial privatised bus service I still wouldn’t put my money on the Tories edging out the Liberal Democrats even though that party is pretty much in the doldrums just now. The Lib Dems at least have some ‘previous’ in Fife with Ming Campbell now coasting towards retirement as the North East Fife MP, the easy to dislike Iain Smith as the MSP for the same area and a healthy number of Lib Dem councillors to boot.

So what, realistically, can the Conservatives hope to achieve by fighting a highly active campaign over the coming weeks? Well, quite a lot actually for, like Hitler’s generals showed during the Spanish Civil War, it’s always better to test yourself in battle – but one that’s not on your own soil - than to wait until the real thing comes along on your doorstep and you find you are not adequately prepared.

The Conservative High Command should therefore set itself three goals, firstly, the political goal of coming third behind the obvious duelling combatants of Labour and the SNP, secondly, influencing the outcome so that the winner is the party that it would rather see winning, and thirdly testing its campaign at a Scottish and British level to establish if it has the right messages, tone and operations to achieve victory where the party does have a chance. So let me take at each of these three in reverse order.

Given the recent tornado that was the banking crisis, hurtling through Britain’s financial sector and devastating individual banks that had left themselves exposed with too much soft debt on their balance sheets and requiring a rescue from a competitor, the government, or in the case of HBOS - both, there is a big and complex story to be told. The public must be scratching it’s head wondering why did all of this come to pass and why were we so unprepared for it? Get the answer wrong and the public may draw the wrong conclusions and settle for the wrong solutions.

The Conservatives have to find the right form of words that puts over a number of key points simply and persuasively. They should focus on these: that the culture of easy money and easy debt was encouraged by the Chancellor and now Prime Minister Gordon Brown by his inflationary policies, expansion of public spending and poor regulatory management.

Secondly, that not all banks have failed and we should therefore be looking to draw lessons from those banks that stayed solvent and encourage all our banks to behave prudently in future, regulating accordingly if required.

Thirdly that given it was not all British banks but namely Northern Rock, Bradford and Bingley, HBOS and RBS that have needed help we can see that the damage was not limited to Scotland but was across the UK.

Finally, that the crisis was across Europe and has severely hit smaller countries such as Ireland (which required an emergency budget by the Government), Iceland (the first West European country to need baled-out by the IMF since Denis Healey’s Britain in 1976) and yes, even Norway, because although it has large financial reserves they in general are not liquid but are tied up in bonds that are not easily realisable.

These four points lay the foundations for the Conservatives to explain that Gordon Brown is culpable and has to take responsibility, not just for encouraging those banks that wished to join him in the easy debt, but for the looming recessions that, according to the Governor of the Bank of England, we are already in.

It would allow them to explain that the economy is damaged - but not broken - and can be made stronger for the future; and, that the problems have not been peculiarly Scottish or British – but that we have suffered more than others because of Gordon Brown’s domestic policies. They also leave the Conservatives free to explain that Britain is far better placed to deal with the problems than Scotland would have been on its own. The sheer scale of the problem of Scotland’s banks dwarfing the Scottish Government’s own annual spend!

When one considers that it took six paragraphs to just argue through what might be required one realises how succinct the party’s communications will have to be. Short, step-by-step points need to be assembled that force the arguments home. Then they need to be market tested to see what works best – not just for Glenrothes but for the coming period right up to and including the general election – for the party must establish its view its narrative of recent events if it is to convince the public that only it has diagnosed the problems correctly and only it knows the remedy.

It then has to place these arguments in a context of what outcome it wants – Labour or SNP – and how it might influence that result by focusing most of its attacks on the one it wishes to lose – and then add in the organising skills to get these messages out to the right audience that is willing to be swayed and can give it the votes to improve upon past performances in Glenrothes, or Central Fife, and come a decent third.

By using the metaphor of not ‘repairing the roof’ when the time was good to do so the Conservative Party has done a decent job in convincing the public that Gordon Brown has squandered the nation’s wealth and left us heavily in debt. It now has to redouble its efforts, find new metaphors or similes to tackle not just Gordon Brown but Alex Salmond too.

It is not beyond the party to do this. It shall be an interesting next few weeks when we find out just how ready the Scottish Conservative party is for the forthcoming general election.