Davidson made a joke party serious by fighting for her political creed

Those who can’t make an inspiring case for their cause shouldn’t be in the business of politics

In the days before Ruth Davidson, there was no more sorry joke than being a Scottish Conservative. When I was a reporter in Edinburgh in the early days of devolution, I was struck by how cruelly Tory MSPS teased each other. One of them, Jamie Mcgrigor, told me that his party should rename itself “The Effing Tories” because that is how they had become universally known. David Cameron considered killing it off, so a new party could grow in its place. The patient, he thought, was terminally ill. Then a 32-year-old kickboxer came along and changed everything.

It’s amusing to see how many Tories who never took Davidson seriously back then regard her resignation as a death knell for the Scottish party, perhaps even the Union itself. Who else, they ask, could win 13 seats in Scotland? There’s talk of keeping her going as a mascot on the logic that, without her, everything collapses. She’d dismiss such talk as a classic example of the Tory curse: panic, pessimism and lack of self-belief. They should be working out how she did it, and see what lessons the Davidson handbook might hold for a UK Tory party very much in need of them.

For her, politics is about campaigning: hitting the road, taking the fight to the enemy, making and winning arguments. She was a happy warrior, never more at home than when posing for a photo opp (or, ideally, three in a day). Happiness, she once said, was travelling “gruelling empty miles filled with limp servicestation sandwiches” in order to get “drunk on the wonder of the new”. In her resignation statement, she said she could not face the “efforts, hours and travel” needed to fight any forthcoming elections, especially now that she’s a mother. The option of being a bit lazier, cutting down on these gruelling miles, seems not to have occurred to her.

Her fundamental belief is that you need to fight a creed with a creed. The Tories had grown addicted to negative campaigning, attacking the other side but not really saying what they stood for. The antidote for nationalism, she said, was unionism: something that should be explained, championed and celebrated. An emotional case can be made – the argument cannot be distilled to pounds, shillings and pence. Those who can’t make an inspiring case for their cause, she thought, shouldn’t be in the business of politics.

She’d despair at Tories who apologised for Toryism. Her style was different: to state beliefs, then find adherents. She speaks of it as a formula: to say “I believe in X, and if you believe in X then you’re a Conservative”. She’d focus on what she called “constituencies of purpose,” not just constituencies of place: farmers, businesses, or security-conscious mothers. She hated the idea of avoiding words or ideas deemed “toxic”: this, to her, was defeatism or cowardice; conceding defeat before you’d started to fight. She wanted “unionist” and “Scottish Tory” to become badges of pride.

She loved the fight and relished hostile questions in a way that was sometimes seen in London as deranged sadomasochism. Why, they wondered, does she hunt for votes in places where Tories are chased down the street? She saw it differently: if you’re not talking to people who disagree with you, it’s not campaigning. When Theresa May’s Cabinet returned from the last election shocked at the level of personal abuse they encountered, she advised them to “grow a pair” and get back in the fray. This is one of her criticisms of Boris Johnson: that he loves to be loved, and is too easily wounded.

Her creed is liberal Conservatism – which, in a way, she embodies. Now and again, she’d refer to herself as “the pregnant lesbian” but, on the whole, avoided the topic and identity politics in general. Her liberalism is her belief in Toryism as a force for social reform. She can list the achievements of the UK Government better than anyone in London: I had no idea, for example, that UK pensioner poverty had hit a record low before I heard her boast about it. She talks about school reform as a social mission, narrowing inequality. Westminster Tories haven’t spoken in such terms since Michael Gove was education secretary. Most think they won’t be taken seriously if they speak in such ways.

But referenda can scramble allegiances, dissolve old prejudices and open new ground. “They make people look again at politics,” she once told me. “The same door was opened for every party in Scotland after the independence referendum. We chose to walk through it.” At a time when just 8 per cent of voters say they’re strongly attached to any political party, the doors may be open for the Tories in plenty of unusual places. All it takes is someone with the energy to do the walking.

The enmity between her and the Prime Minister is all the more baffling given their similarities. Both are liberals, both love revving up crowds and, even more rarely, both can draw crowds. Yet personally, she finds him unbearable. Perhaps they’re too similar. Then there’s Brexit, which she regards as a weapon of massive distraction that has stopped Tories talking about Toryism. She believes in unions and sees, in Brexit, a triumph of the narrow nationalism that she is fighting. She thinks Brexit has handed the SNP a potent new weapon and in her bleaker moments wonders if it may yet destroy everything she has sought to build.

This is, perhaps, the final lesson. She’s one of the toughest, most effective and accomplished Conservatives in Britain and still regards leaving the European Union as a calamity. She has many reasons for resigning, but one is that she can’t sell an agenda she can’t bring herself to believe in. This ought to give the Tories pause. It might sometimes be tempting to talk or think of Remainers as the enemy. But that means people like her. Such sectarianism can only serve to alienate people from a party that may soon need every voter it can get.

The idea of healing referendum wounds might seem impossible, with feelings running as high as they are now. But the lesson Ruth Davidson has taught her party is that the impossible can be pulled off with enough energy, optimism and Conservatism. She’d probably add that the greatest of these is Conservatism.