You ain’t seen nothing yet!
Ruth Davidson wants a baby with her partner Jen. But f irst there’s the urgent matter of ruining Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP’s plans to inf lict Indyref 2 on Scotland
WHERE to begin? In the car, where Ruth Davidson flips down the visor mirror, spikes her hair with wax and applies a few dabs of Maybelline makeup before meeting voters? ‘I’m doing this now,’ she says, spritzing on some Daisy perfume, ‘because it gives me five minutes extra in bed every morning.’
Or in the Edinburgh coffee shop, where she orders a Diet Coke and pulls a folder of briefing papers from the tattered rucksack that serves as her mobile office? ‘I’m not much of a princess,’ she concedes.
Maybe at the garden centre in the Borders? Here, Davidson poses for the cameras with a potted azalea which she knows is unscented, but hammily pretends to sniff anyway.
Who would expect any less from Nicola Sturgeon’s tormentor-inchief; a politician who has never knowingly undersold herself at any photo opportunity, any time, anywhere. ‘It is important to engage,’ she says. ‘The idea that you have to be po-faced about politics annoys me.’
To this end, Ruth has ridden a bull, played bagpipes, served ice cream cones and — my favourite — straddled the gun of a tank flying the Union flag as it trundled through a glen. Here, between rows of seedlings and glazed pots, she gives me a swift masterclass in looking statesmanlike at a photo op.
‘Do the hands like this,’ she says, holding her palms upwards as if she were pleading with an invisible electorate to accept her excellent imaginary point. ‘Do more hands and then say rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb.’ She looks at her watch and points to the horizon. What is she doing now? ‘The Knitting Pattern pose. Watch and learn.’
Ruth Davidson is a Tory politician, yes, but she is not like other Tory politicians. The MSP for Edinburgh Central and leader of the Scottish Conservatives doesn’t own a property, a pair of leather trousers a country retreat, a duck house, a battle bus or an extravagant Latin vocabulary and a sense of entitlement, courtesy of family connections and a plush education.
‘You can’t do that thrusting Oxbridge I’m-so-marvellous thing in Scotland. It doesn’t work up here. You would get cut down to size pretty quickly,’ she says. Her style is more hardy perennial than hothouse bloomer.
‘I have an internal barometer, telling me if I have done well or badly. If anyone is gushing about me, my head won’t be turned. If anyone is critical, I won’t be upset. I just get on with it.’ And what does that say about her? ‘That I am very Presbyterian, Jan. And very Scottish!’
Certainly, if Davidson is remarkable for what she is not, she is even more remarkable for what she is.
The 38-year-old woman credited with inspiring the astonishing Tory revival in Scotland is a workingclass former BBC journalist; an exTerritorial Army signaller and a keen kickboxer who once affectionately described herself as a ‘shovelfaced lesbian’.
She is also a church-going Protestant whose faith meant that she struggled for years to come to terms with her sexuality. It still troubles her that she cannot marry her fiancée Jen Wilson in church as she would wish, but hey ho: ‘We will do something instead that works for us.’
The couple are hunting for a ‘house with a garden and a front door of our own’. For they are keen to start a family. ‘We are going to have a serious talk about it after the election,’ says Davidson. ‘I have always had the idea that I would like to be a mother.’
YET with one of the biggest jobs in politics on her plate, where will she find the time? It is hard to underestimate Davidson’s role in Scottish and UK politics. With the Tories now the main opposition party and her the SNP’s chief antagonist, she is the woman at the head of the thin blue line keeping the Union together.
‘Sit down!’ Davidson bellowed at a gobsmacked Nicola Sturgeon in March, during a furious Holyrood debate over seeking a second referendum. It is a measure of Davidson’s authoritative poise that the First Minister did indeed sit down, her mouth opening and closing like a shocked haddock.
All of this would have been unimaginable even a short while ago, but the Corbyn-led Labour implosion, a Scottish electorate sick of independence talk and her considerable leadership skills mean that Davidson’s Conservatives go into the election in a better position than they have been for a generation. Optimistic estimates say they can swipe a dozen or so seats from the still-dominant SNP.
Her hard work has come at a price. Since being elected leader in November 2011, Davidson has fought eight campaigns: two local government contests; two General Elections; one Holyrood election; one European election and two referendums — one on independence and one on Brexit.
The pace has been gruelling. Her
car, a Vauxhall Astra filled with leaflets, wrappers and crud, had done 12,000 miles when she bought it three years ago — now it wheezes along with 85,000 on the clock.
Her John Lewis boots, a year old, have had to be re-soled and re-heeled. When her vision became blurred recently, it turned out to be an ulcer on her cornea, a condition exacerbated by long hours at work wearing contact lenses.
Yet as another Tory leader would say (‘I am a huge admirer of Theresa May. There is a woman of guts’) you must work hard to get the vote out and take nothing for granted.
‘Let me give Nicola Sturgeon this advice,’ said Davidson, at the Tory manifesto launch with Mrs May this month. ‘The Prime Minister says she’s a bloody difficult woman — well, you ain’t seen nothing yet.’
Davidson’s strategy features repeated rallying cries to crush Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP and their ‘unwanted plans’ for a second referendum. ‘It is time for them to get back to the day job,’ she will roar.
Last week’s spendidly fiery TV debate featured Sturgeon and Davidson giving each other both barrels while wearing the opposition’s colours; Nicola in Tory blue and Ruth in socialist red.
Were these outfits chosen to send out a political message? ‘Are you asking if Nicola and I co-ordinate our outfits?’ she asks, arching an eyebrow. ‘All these extraordinary female leaders and yet here you are, asking me about our clothes.’
No, I squeak. I mean clothes as political signals and . . .
‘Here you are again, going on about the clothes.’ I’m not! I’m talking about the tribal colours you wore! Was there any significance?
Apparently not, because Ruth is ‘not a clothes horse’ but concedes that she and Sturgeon have one identical outfit. ‘A pink dress and pink jacket from Hobbs. Hers is in a spectacularly smaller size than mine, but we have never worn them on the same day so far.’
After the debate, Ruth unwound at home with three vodka and Cokes — which went straight to her head as she rarely drinks during a campaign. And she says she didn’t seek a post-debate appraisal from Jen — a 33-year old Irish woman who works for an environmental charity. Why not? ‘I would like to think I’m not that needy.’
The couple have been together for three years and live in central Edinburgh with their springer spaniel, Wilson. Their relationship got ‘very serious, very fast’, with Ruth proposing to a ‘rather shocked’ Jen last year.
‘I didn’t go down on one knee but we were in Paris, which I know is a cliché, but I do love it.’
Davidson wanted to propose near the Sacre Coeur, but changed her mind when she saw the swarms of buskers and tatty tourist stalls that now proliferate there. ‘Not the most romantic place.’ She had high hopes when they found a medieval restaurant nearby: ‘I thought, Oh yes, this is quite good.’ However, Jen wanted to dine at an outdoor café with singers — and Ruth had to put off her proposal until the next day. ‘I had the ring on me and it felt bigger throughout the day. Then I had a whole night of just being stressed and grumpy. I have newfound respect for men who grow up knowing they have to do this. It is petrifying. I didn’t think Jen would say “No”, but the idea that there was even a chance she might was terrifying.’ The couple planned to marry this October, but have had to postpone their wedding after spending a small fortune on Wilson’s vets’ bills. The poor thing was run over after bolting towards some birds.
AfTER metal pins and a major skin graft, he’s on the mend and beginning to run around on all four legs again, albeit with a limp. His owner won’t put a figure on how much she has spent, but concedes it was a five-figure sum.
‘Lovely little Wilson!’ she cries, mothering instincts to the fore. Starting a family is high on the agenda. Time is running out agewise for both women and Ruth has always ‘wanted to have children with the person who was going to be my forever relationship’. Who would get pregnant, her or Jen?
‘We are not going there. The mechanics of this is not something I am willing to discuss in the papers,’ she says. ‘If and when we have children, I would like them to speak to Mum about it, not pick up a newspaper cutting.’
At the moment the couple rarely see each other as Davidson is focused on the election on June 8. ‘I feel a duty to make sure that we push back on Scottish independence,’ she says. ‘If I do nothing else in politics, playing my part in helping keep the Union together will be enough for me. But I have bigger ambitions than that.’
first Minister one day? ‘I should not be leader of the party in Scotland if I do not want to be first Minister of Scotland.’
Prime Minister? ‘My job is here in Scotland,’ says Davidson. Can she imagine that changing? ‘There is an awful lot I want to achieve first.’
That’s not exactly a ‘No’. I think she is unstoppable. Conservatism was finished in Scotland until — tootle toot! — Davidson galloped over the horizon in her chain-store boots. In politics as in life, she has never let prejudice or doubt halt her progress. ‘I bulldoze my way through,’ is how she puts it.
Next month she will stand on the brink of history, a one-woman blockade on the road to the People’s Republic of Sturgeonistan. Tatty knapsack on her back, Ruth will be smelling of Daisy, hopefully even of roses, as she potentially changes the political course of a country with a wink and a smile. Hands, hands, rhubarb, rhubarb, onwards she must go.