So, could it be next stop No10 for Ruth?
FORGET First Ministerial. She looked Prime Ministerial. When Ruth Davidson took the stage in Edinburgh yesterday to celebrate not just her own constituency victory but the remarkable success of the Conservatives across Scotland, she exuded the sort of authority that ought to make Nicola Sturgeon very uncomfortable.
And boy are others starting to notice. In an impromptu speech in Peterborough, David Cameron described her as ‘extraordinary’ twice in less than a minute.
‘If someone had told me even two years ago that the Conservatives would be the second party in Scotland I would have told them to go away and lie down,’ the PM remarked, before crediting Ruth as an ‘inspirational leader’.
Indeed, Davidson is so popular in Westminster right now you get the feeling that if someone had shoehorned her in as a last minute replacement for Zac Goldsmith, she’d currently be en route to Mansion House to be sworn in as the new Mayor of London.
Given how enviously her southern brethren are eyeing her Holyrood win then, you have to wonder, how long can Scotland hold on to her?
On Tuesday I spent the day with Ruth as she traversed the country in a helicopter in a final attempt to get the votes she needed to push her into second place.
Most politicians, when forced to spend extended time with a journalist, get nervous and irritable. They’re terrified of letting the mask slip, saying the wrong thing, letting reporters see they’re a real live human being.
Not Ruth. She’s every bit as candid and sweary as you might imagine, her bright eyes sparkling mischievously as she tells a dirty joke or winds up a member of her staff.
At 1,000 feet in the air when the helicopter door suddenly blew open, she did not lose her cool. I’m afraid I did, screaming my head off and hanging on to her arm, convinced I was about to watch one of Scotland’s most talented politicians plunge to her death.
Eventually, she turned to me and said in a calm and measured voice: ‘Let go of my arm so I can shut the door.’ Grace under fire, indeed. She is a natural campaigner, confident and at ease with just about everyone she meets whether it’s a gentle old fisherman who wants to talk about his daughter or a prospective candidate with a talent for reciting Doric poetry.
She’s eager to learn and knows when not to overplay her hand.
‘I never pretend to know about something I don’t,’ she told me after a young fisherman related a complex family issue concerning boat subsidies. ‘People aren’t stupid. They see through you. Instead I listen and absorb, then speak to someone who I know can help.’
IN all I spent almost 12 hours with her. It struck me at one point that for all her stagemanaged chumminess, Nicola Sturgeon would never allow a journalist such open and unfettered access.
Make no mistake though. For all that she is jolly and friendly, Ruth is as sharp as a needle. She has a fast and fiendish brain and it’s constantly whirring away with policies, ideas and schemes.
At one point, when discussing a candidate she suspected might not make it on to the list (in the end, they did) she talked about a ‘two election strategy’. I raised an eyebrow. A what? She gave me a toothy grin.
‘You have no idea the plans I have in my head,’ she said.
And that’s just it. I don’t. And neither does anybody else. Certainly success, along with personal happiness, suits her. She has been with her partner Jen Wilson for three years now, and seems immensely settled. She has lost weight, visibly relaxed into the job, and opened up to the electorate about who she really is, even letting cameras into her parents’ home in an intimate party political broadcast last year.
In short, she’s grown into the role of leader. For all the wacky photo ops, she is a politician of substance, someone who people listen to and respect, a safe pair of hands.
Ultimately, that’s why the Tories won so many seats in this election.
To quote Ruth herself, people aren’t stupid. They won’t vote for someone just because they look good on the back of a buffalo.
In the past Davidson has always pooh-poohed notions that her head might be swayed by the bright lights of Westminster, and that may well be true. She talks wistfully about wanting a family, of a countryside idyll with children and dogs running around, and of doing this job ‘until I get bored of it’.
But I cannot believe there aren’t some Tory party mandarins in London watching her every move with eagle-eyed interest, and I cannot believe that someone as ambitious as she might not be even a little bit interested in what Westminster might have to offer her. Quite honestly, if someone turned up in a time machine tomorrow and declared that in 2025 Ruth Davidson had become the leader of the British Conservatives, I wouldn’t be surprised.
For now though, Ruth has a huge task ahead of her in leading Holyrood’s official opposition party.
Nicola Sturgeon has lost seats, is lacking a majority and will now face a formidable foe across the podium each week during First Ministers’ Questions.
Over to you, Ruth.
IS there a more potent symbol of the notion of ‘too much too soon’ than 17year-old Brooklyn Beckham driving around London in a £37,000 C-Class Mercedes when he hasn’t even passed his driving test? A second hand Fiesta would be better – instead of a car worth more than most people make in a year.