Is Ruth Davidson the best PM we’ll never have?
THERE aren’t many professions that are trusted even less than estate agents, bankers and – I have to admit – journalists. In fact there’s only one. Polls repeatedly show that politicians are the least respected profession. No wonder when so many make empty promises or seem more interested in silly Westminster games than genuinely working to improve the country.
You know the old joke: How can you tell when a politician is lying? His lips are moving. And even when someone emerges who seems different and fresh – a Tony Blair or a Boris – pretty soon they end up being seen as just another hack politician.
But there is one politician who seems to have the opposite effect: Ruth Davidson. Every time the leader of the Scottish Conservative Party opens her mouth she nudges up the respect level.
On Sunday she gave a searingly honest – and very moving – interview in which she ruled out ever being prime minister. As she put it: “I value my relationship and my mental health too much for it. I will not be a candidate.”
IN THE interview Ms Davidson revealed a long history of depression and selfharm. “I started hurting myself, punching walls, cutting my stomach and arms with blades or broken glass, drinking far, far too much and becoming belligerent and angry, pushing people away.”
The medicine for her depression gave her “desperate, dark, terrible dreams... I started having suicidal thoughts”.
She described her depression as “like a smothering black blanket over my head cutting out the sky. It was heavy, constricting, suffocating. It took away hope and energy and life”.
There’s a deep irony about this. It is precisely this honesty and ability to change the rules of politics – imagine anyone else having the courage to speak so freely about their mental health issues – that leads so many people to think that Ms Davidson would make a brilliant prime minister.
Even if she never did anything else in her entire career the simple fact of a woman in her exalted position speaking so openly about self-harm and depression will itself have done