Davidson to defy May by breaking from UK party

Triumphant leader signals dissatisfaction with hard Brexit and controversial coalition deal with DUP

RUTH DAVIDSON is to defy Theresa May’s plans for a hard Brexit and tear her Scottish party away from English control after the UK Tories’ disastrous General Election result.

Amid a growing clamour among senior Tories in London for Ms Davidson to be given a top position in the UK party, her aides are working on a deal that would see the Scottish party break away to form a separate organisation.

It would maintain a close relationship with the English party – they have been joined together as part of the United Kingdom Conservative and Unionist Party since 1965 – and its 13 MPS would take the Tory whip at the Commons.

Although it’s been mooted for some time, the imminent split is a direct result of a dramatic deterioration in relations between the Scottish Tory hierarchy in Edinburgh and 10 Downing Street.

Fresh from her success in winning an extra 12 Scottish seats in Thursday’s election, at the same time as the Prime Minister was losing 21 constituencies in England, Ms Davidson yesterday vowed to use her Commons votes to prioritise the single market over curbing immigration.

This is certain to split Tory ranks as Mrs May has pledged to take the UK out of both the single market and the EU customs union as part of her Brexit negotiations, which begin next week.

But after notching up the biggest Tory victory in Scotland since 1983, the Scottish party leader yesterday said that the election result did not give the Prime Minister a mandate to take Britain out of the single market.

Ms Davidson also signalled her opposition to Mrs May’s deal with the DUP in blunt fashion by tweeting a link to the same-sex marriage lecture she gave at Amnesty’s Pride lecture in Belfast last year.

She is engaged to Jen Wilson, an Irish Catholic who campaigned during the Republic’s same-sex marriage referendum, is a practising Christian herself and has said she would like to get married in a local church.

Her views could not be further from those of the DUP, a staunch opponent of same-sex marriage and supporter of the “traditional” definition of marriage.

Ms Davidson said she had been assured by Mrs May that gay rights would not be undermined by any arrangement with the DUP. “I was fairly straightforward with her and I told her that there were a number of things that count to me more than party,” she told BBC Reporting Scotland.

“One of them is country, one of the others is LGBTI (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender and Intersex) rights.”

She said that she had been given a categoric assurance that there would be “absolutely no rescission of LGBTI rights in the rest of the UK”.

Ms Davidson flexed her political muscle following a disastrous night for the SNP, which saw Alex Salmond lose his seat. Nicola Sturgeon hinted that she will row back on her plan for a second independence referendum but Ms Davidson demanded she “give Scotland a break” by taking the plan off the table.

The Nationalists ended up with 35 seats, the Tories 13, Labour seven and the Liberal Democrats four. But this compares with the 56 seats the Nationalists won in 2015 when the other three parties held only one constituency each.

But the Conservatives in Scotland have complained of too much “interference” from London since Mrs May assumed office last year. The focus of their annoyance appears to be Scottishborn Fiona Hill, the Downing Street communications chief.

This came to a head recently when Ms Davidson was “ordered” not to run a distinctive Scottish campaign but instead to “stick to the script” devised in London of pinning the entire Tory effort around Mrs May and Brexit.

This ran completely contrary to the issue Ms Davidson favoured – namely the SNP demanding another independence referendum. Ms Davidson reckoned her opposition chimed with the vast majority of Scottish voters. As a result she ignored the “orders” and won 12 extra seats.

Given the lack of an overall majority, the Scottish Tory votes would be crucial to Prime Minister May getting her legislation through the Commons.

Above all their votes could make or break her Brexit negotiations.

Most Scots voted Remain in the EU referendum and Ms Davidson has repeatedly said that she favours Britain reaching an agreement that allows it to stay in both the single market and customs union.

Speaking at a press conference at her Bute House residence in Edinburgh, Ms Sturgeon said SNP MPS would also try to use their influence in a hung parliament to stop a hard Brexit.

The First Minister was forced to admit a massive backlash against her referendum demand was “undoubtedly” a factor in her party losing 21 MPS, including Mr Salmond and Angus Robertson, and pledged to “consider very carefully” her next steps.

But Ms Davidson demanded Ms Sturgeon immediately dump a plan she said had turned out to be “a massive political miscalculation”.

In a humiliating setback for Ms Sturgeon, the SNP won only 37 per cent of the popular vote and lost the support of half a million Scots compared with the 2015 election.

Labour also won a series of unexpected gains including Glasgow North East as the surge in support for Jeremy Corbyn spread north of the Border.