Bold, brave and a poster girl for modern Tories
By the annals of modern political insurgency, the Scottish Tory leader’s achievement on Thursday was one for the ages. Ruth Davidson did not just increase the party’s contingent at Holyrood, she doubled it. She did not merely defeat the forces of Scottish Labour, she eclipsed them.
She has not just strengthened the Tory brand, she has rehabilitated it, in its greatest electoral success since 1992 and its first big, giddying recovery since 1979.
Today, because Nicola Sturgeon has just led the Nationalists to an unprecedented third term in office, we should all be talking about her.
Instead, Davidson is the name on everyone’s lips as the SNP tries to make the best of things, but tastes bitter ashes after a campaign at once risk-averse, vainglorious and, in the past few days, carelessly slapdash.
Miss Davidson did not only wrestle a big new troop of Tory MSPs through the mechanism of a complex electoral system, she won real live geographical constituencies – from the crags of Balmoral to the mudflats of the Solway.
In the night’s most incredible result, she secured a seat for herself, not in some green-welly shire but at the historic heart of Scotland’s capital.
So unexpected was her personal triumph in Edinburgh Central – a seat in which her party came fourth only five years ago – that Miss Davidson arrived at the count without a prepared victory speech. She was already confident, ebullient.
But she took that moment with a smile so vast, a grin of incredulity so luminous, it was surely visible from space. And why not? This, and Conservative success overall, had been wrested from unpromising soil and with signal courage, while many eagerly waited to see her fail.
We forget how, almost casually, it hinged on near-forgotten events. Had Malcolm Macaskill not, in March 2011, been forced for personal reasons to stand down as top-of-the-list Tory candidate in Glasgow, then Miss Davidson, who was bumped up to succeed him, would not have made it to Holyrood.
Had Alex Salmond’s Nationalists not so unexpectedly won an overall majority that spring, Annabel Goldie would probably have served out another parliament, in her matronly Widow Twankey way, as Scottish Conservative leader. Had Murdo Fraser not launched his candidacy for leadership with an ill-judged rant (embarrassing David Cameron himself), Miss Davidson would never have beaten him. Once more, in the campaign now crowned with such spectacular success, Miss Davidson took several calculated risks. First, and to a degree that seemed almost a hostage to fortune, she from the start never pretended the Scottish Tories were bidding for government.
They sought – and we were hit with the line continuously – to be but an effective opposition; to clip the SNP’s wings, to surf that considerable body of Scots opinion that, above all else, wants the constitution for the time being to be put aside and, on no account any time soon, a second independence referendum.
Second, and this was still riskier, the leader foregrounded herself, with the party branded at the campaign’s outset ‘Ruth Davidson’s Scottish Conservatives’. By the end – that extraordinary rally a few days ago in Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Garden – it was little more than ‘Ruth Davidson’.
There was no stunt so silly, no photo opportunity so ridiculous, that she would indignantly eschew it. There was no image consultancy or power dressing; she appeared daily, pert and round, bejeaned and casual, with the mien of a downed but indefatigable pilot from the Battle of Britain.
Colleagues were nowhere to be seen. Westminster friends, even the Prime Minister himself, did not cross the Border. With their own shabby embarrassments this spring, Miss Davidson would not risk weakening her own brand by visual association. Why should they come? She didn’t need them.
What you see, always, is what you get. Miss Davidson has never made a secret of who she is or whom she loves. She has never made any pretence of cooing, cake-baking domesticity.
She is a person of extraordinary, serene self-possession. With a quick, keen mind, rat-tat delivery and, after all, years of professional broadcasting experience, she is invariably master of any occasion and situation.
She gazes at you, keenly, amusedly, with great hazel eyes, a certain set of jaw, as you feel resistance crumble away. She tolerates no lèse-majesté: ‘I do hope,’ she has rumbled indignantly more than once, ‘that this interview isn’t going to be all about my sexuality.’
And yet, she talks human and has a vast, cultured hinterland. (For a few minutes on an Edinburgh street, scarcely two weeks ago, one on one she discussed in detail and with authority the fiction of Muriel Spark, the literary criticism of Candia McWilliam and the drama of Jay Presson Allen as if she had all the time in the world).
And, a virtue rare in a public figure and especially in her profession, Miss Davidson is incapable of pretence. She might seem faintly comic playing bucking bronco with a puzzled buffalo, or less than dignified squatting with Edinburgh tots to put fresh-kneaded mud pies into a pretend oven, but the Scottish Tory leader was unabashedly enjoying herself – and it showed.
All this in the full knowledge that, having assented unhesitatingly to let her front the campaign single-handed, there would be nowhere to hide should it all go horribly wrong.
Not three days ago, most doubted if the Scottish Tories could be sure of retaining the three hard-won constituencies they already held. In every one of them the SNP panted hard behind. yet Ayr; Galloway and West Dumfries; Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire were retained easily.
The Scottish Tories stormed besides to seize Eastwood, West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, and Edinburgh Central with unpredicted ease. (The Queen has only two homes in Scotland but each now boasts a Tory MSP).
WHAT is more, this is not merely further Tory force, but new Tory force. From young Douglas Ross in the Highlands and Islands to the magnificent Annie Wells in Glasgow, this is fresh and vibrant talent; ordinary Scots of vim and brio and diverse, rich life experience, not prepared to bow the knee before the tired verities of the big state and wasteful, managerial social democracy.
Mr Ross has run a dairy farm and referees semi-professional football most weekends; Miss Wells’s mum was Speaker Michael Martin’s cleaner. Diverse, grounded and rather interesting, none of the 31- strong group resembles the supercilious, entitlement reeking Tories of caricature.
We once more, thanks to Miss Davidson and her 30 enthused colleagues, face renewed SNP minority government – an administration that must now listen, must negotiate, must argue its measures through line by line and not by Bute House fiat.
This is far better for Scotland; better, really, for the SNP – and, one hopes, terminal for the Named Person Scheme. The weekend that Ruth Davidson made good was the weekend, at last, that Scottish politics grew up.