Hard work lies ahead for Davidson

There’s a joke going around the Conservative Conference in Birmingham that speaks to the fear Tories now feel about the possibility of a Jeremy Corbyn-led government.

Whenever they’re confronted by an MSP or a Scottish MP, Tories of an older vintage will say they remember when Scotland used vote en bloc for the Labour party.

Then they thank their Scottish colleague “for imposing Tory government on the UK”.

Scottish Tories would quite like it if the UK party would stop trying to impose SNP government on Scotland. Constant Brexit infighting and the risk that MPS and party members will be putting someone unsavoury in charge terrifies the popular Scots, who would like to get on with winning power themselves without worrying about having to bail out “Prime Minister Johnson” in another snap general election.

With a tilt at Number 10 definitively ruled out, Ruth Davidson has instead made this conference about her bid to become First Minister of Scotland. Her supporters believe that while it may seem unlikely, a Conservative administration at Holyrood is possible.

Going into the 2007 election, the SNP were defending the same share of the vote as the Tories will be in 2021, with fewer MSPS

– although their main rivals, Labour, were in a much weaker position than the SNP government is now.

There are two things that it is widely accepted Davidson needs to do if she wants to have a chance of winning the next Scottish election.

Work on the first of those seems to be progressing reasonably well. The party is dominated by Davidson’s image: she is their only recognisable figure in the Scottish Parliament, and it’s doubtful that as many people in Scotland would know who David Mundell is.

The Scottish Tories desperately need to push forward some new talent into the limelight, to build the sense that the party is a government in waiting, rather than a one-woman publicity machine.

That much seems to have been acknowledged. In what has been a Ruth rally at the past few UK conferences, the Scottish Conservative fringe meeting on the Sunday afternoon was handed over by the leader to three other voices – indeed, the Scottish Tory leader slipped out before the end, having only made brief remarks.