Your policies need the boot, Ruth
RUTH Davidson’s latest step to try and convince us that she’s a credible alternative first minister for Scotland is to reveal that she thinks her backbench MSPs are, well, crap.
Yes, she has announced that she is having a clearout and looking to headhunt some really senior and serious people to replace them.
There was me thinking the voters decided who got to represent them in their national parliament.
The deeper problem for Davidson is that she has run her “list” strategy before – and it did result in a few very capable faces arriving in Holyrood, notably former Scottish athlete Brian Whittle and constitutional lawyer and academic Adam Tompkins.
They’re good MSPs who would be at home on any party’s benches. Quite literally, actually, as neither come across as natural Tories.
Tompkins, in particular, has been a Tory for almost as long as he’s been a politician, which is about five minutes.
Perhaps they find Davidson’s Tories a comfortable home just now because of such a complete policy vacuum. The Tories’ rise in popularity recently has been almost exclusively about two things: 1) Ruth and 2) The Union.
When the Tories start getting serious about their policies in preparation for government, we’ll start to see the meat on their plans to bring the free market in to our NHS. To let businesses run our schools. To always see tax as the enemy of profit and progress. It’s these outdated and damaging policies she needs to clear out, not her politicians.