Goodbye Holyrood, it really has been a blast...
ON Wednesday night, I had a chat with a colleague as we walked back to our office from the chamber of the Scottish parliament. The next day, Holyrood would rise and we would walk out of its gates as MSPs for the last time.
Between us, we had 28 years of elected service to the place and we both agreed our overwhelming emotion was that we were sad we didn’t feel more sad about going.
Being an MSP is all-consuming. It’s not just the time spent in the debating chamber or in committee but the casework, the outreach, the visits, the fundraising and campaigning. The receptions and charity dos, business breakfasts and association dinners.
It is discussion panels and media interviews, leaflet-posting and street stalls. It involves public meetings and roaring off round the country to help out in some by-election or other.
There is blurring between parliamentary and party and personal, meaning there’s never a clear enough way to carve out time for each as they bleed into each other.
You’re never ‘off’. The number of times you get that look in the house when you have to interrupt whatever you are doing with a sudden, ‘Sorry, darling, but I really DO have to take this call’.
It is utterly absorbing. That can be in a good way. You don’t join a political party and put yourself up for election if you are not committed to the cause.
But there are only so many times everyone and everything in your life can be relegated to second best as your political mistress takes precedence.
I have loved being an MSP and I loved leading my party. I took over just after our worst election result at Holyrood, when the whole existence of a Scottish Conservative Party was under question, and ended up leading the main opposition.
We more than doubled our MSPs, returned the largest number of MPs to Westminster for nearly 40 years and took part in big, epoch-shaping events such as the referendums on Brexit and independence.
As a politician you never think you will be asked to speak in front of thousands of people in big music venues such as Glasgow’s SSE Hydro or Wembley Arena. To do both, with millions more tuning in at home, was a huge privilege and shows just how mainstream political debate has become in the last decade.
AND I loved it. Really, really loved it. I remember the official opening of parliament in 2011, when I was first elected. I brought my mum as my guest to the ceremony, to thank her for all her support down the years. I clearly recall telling her there had been loads of times I’d been lost in life but I knew that, right then, in that time, I was exactly where I was meant to be.
With the SNP having just won a majority and a referendum on independence on the horizon, I knew I wanted to play my full part in the fight to keep our country together.
While others may run from it, I remain proud of the work our party did in the Better Together campaign – showing that different political traditions can work together in a common cause.
I’m also proud of the men and women who stepped up to become candidates after that vote – our success in 2016 stripped the SNP of its majority and stopped another Indyref in its tracks.
As I said in my last speech to Holyrood, the team that came in 2016 will always be ‘my’ team.
But part of building something and leading is to set the standard.
I was the longest-serving leader the Scottish Conservatives have had and I did as much as I could, working as hard as I could for as long as I could.
But when I realised I wasn’t performing to the level I once had and to the standard I had set myself, I knew it was time to go.
While others have found a new lease of life relieved of the sometimes heavy burden of leadership – John Swinney, Johann Lamont and Iain Gray are all excellent ex-leaders – in truth, not being in charge and watching other people do things differently has always chafed.
For the past 18 months I’ve felt out of place, a long way from the certainty I had when I arrived.
So while there is much about Holyrood I’ll miss, it’s time to go.
I look forward to fresh challenges and a life where the phone doesn’t interrupt quite so much.
After, of course, the small matter of this election campaign.