RUTH’S WARNING FOR NICOLA: WRITE US OFF IF YOU DARE

As she delivers a barnstorming conference speech...

THIS wasn’t so much a conference speech as a pitch for a job – Nicola Sturgeon’s. When Ruth Davidson took to the stage in Glasgow yesterday to address her party’s spring conference, her intent was clear.

Wearing a strident red suit against the soft blue background of the conference set, she sent out a warning to one person and one person only.

‘This Scottish Conservative Party is ready to serve,’ was what she said. What she meant was: ‘Nicola Sturgeon, I am after you and after your job.’

It is worth repeating those words over and over because, simple though they sound, the enormity of their meaning cannot be underestimated.

The Scottish Tory leader was not just saying her party could do better and win more seats; she was claiming it could win the Scottish election and she could become First Minister.

Now, while this was mixed with a sizeable dollop of caution – she warned her party it had a long way to go (she isn’t going to start measuring curtains for Bute House just yet) – the underlying confidence was unmistakable.

However, the key point here is this: for a Scottish Conservative leader to make such an optimistic claim even just a couple of years ago would have been laughable.

Can anyone imagine Annabel Goldie or David McLetchie coming to a Scottish Conservative conference and declaring: ‘We are ready to form the Government of Scotland’?

Had either of these former Tory leaders done anything like that, they would have been ridiculed – and rightly so.

BUT Miss Davidson is not being laughed at; she is being taken seriously because such an outcome, which seemed as likely as Scotland winning the World Cup a few years ago, is now a possibility.

All political leaders are warned never to make predictions of seizing power. The excruciating memory of David Steel’s now infamous ‘Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government’ speech to his Liberal Party still resonates around our political classes, 35 years after he made it.

Miss Davidson will have been aware of that and, to be fair, she didn’t put a date on her forecast for seizing power. What she did was tell her party it could run Scotland. Indeed, it was more about giving her activists the confidence to believe they could succeed, rather than anything else.

But it was still the most bold, the most ambitious, the most belligerent declaration of intent by a Scottish Conservative leader for 20 years – and, what’s more, it was realistic.

After all, she now leads the largest opposition party at Holyrood: and if there is one rule in politics which almost always comes true, it is this: the biggest opposition party usually gets a chance to grab hold of power at some time.

This is because of basic human nature. If one party has been in charge for too long, eventually the voters get sick of it. They want change and, more often than not, they opt for the next taxi on the rank.

Miss Davidson is now driving that taxi: and she knows it.

But this simple message – ‘We can be that better government, we must be that better government, we will be that better government. That’s our ambition, nothing less’ – was about more than just enthusing her supporters.

It was also designed to put the wind up the SNP. For years, Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon have sneered at the Conservatives in Scotland. All you have to do is listen to the way they spit out the word ‘Tories’, as if it’s worse than something they picked up on their shoes, to get the full condescending nastiness of their attitude.

But neither Mr Salmond nor Miss Sturgeon has ever had to deal with the Tories as worthy adversaries: not until now.

Successive First Ministers, from Donald Dewar to Miss Sturgeon, have been able to dismiss, ridicule and patronise the Tories. To be fair, the Tories probably deserved at least some of it, given the appalling efforts the party made to make itself electable over the past two decades.

Well, they can’t sneer any more, not least because Miss Davidson’s speech contained that defiant undertone. She was saying: ‘I am going to harry you and wheedle away at your failures until you can take no more, then I’m going to keep going.’

The Scottish Conservative leader mentioned the efforts her party made to get the Scottish Government to retreat on business rates, efforts which were rewarded with a Ministerial U-turn only last month.

SHE referred to plans – still sketchy – to challenge the Scottish Government on the health service; but the main focus of this part of her speech was education. This, also, was deliberate. Miss Sturgeon has made education the touchstone issue for her Government, the issue on which she has asked to be judged.

So Miss Davidson has decided to take her at her word and yesterday was effectively giving the Government notice that, from now on, Tory assaults on educational failures are going to be relentless.

It is a well-worn battle tactic to attack the enemy where he is strongest and this is what Miss Davidson clearly intends to do. She is going to go after the Scottish Government on education because that is the area which Miss Sturgeon is concentrating on above all others.

The logic is pretty sound. If the Tories can win on education and, by extension, the SNP loses public support on this issue, then it really will be game over for Miss Sturgeon’s administration.

This was a confident, mature speech infused with the anger and hurt that tens of thousands of Scots feel about being let down by their Government. It had passion but it also had steel; and her SNP opponents will not be able to ignore its warnings.

But what was perhaps more intriguing was the way in which Miss Davidson has hardened her message as her party has grown in strength.

Before last year’s Holyrood election, she was chided for merely asking voters to give her the chance to be the second largest party at Holyrood.

However, it is just because Miss Davidson did not overplay her hand or over-exaggerate her party’s chances of success last year that she is likely to be taken more seriously this time.

‘We want to be the second largest party,’ was her message last year – and it came true.

‘We want to be the Scottish Government,’ is her message now – and the First Minister would be a fool to ignore it.

The Scottish Conservative Party is ready to serve