RUTH: WHY LOVE HAD TO COME FIRST
In her own heartbreaking words, Ruth Davidson reveals why she quit as Tory leader
IN the end, it was a photograph that nearly set me off. Posted on social media by the party’s director of policy – a brilliant young Slovakian political scientist, Marek Zemanik – in a chain of behind-the-scenes snaps from the past eight years. I had promised myself I wouldn’t cry but, after Thursday’s press conference when I resigned as leader of the Scottish Conservatives, I went straight to pick up my son Finn up from childcare – and Marek’s hastily posted snap prompted a catch in my throat.
It was me, bending over a flat tyre in the rain, making a rude gesture at Marek for taking a picture of me gruntingly changing the wheel.
I’d completely forgotten the incident and that one picture brought it all back.
It was the day of our 2016 manifesto launch. This was a make-or-break campaign. If we didn’t show a significant breakthrough – after 20 years of stagnation and decline – then the game was a bogey.
My leadership was a failure and the idea that I’d faced down when pitching to lead – that the Scottish party didn’t actually NEED to wind itself up and divorce from the UK Conservatives in order to win again – was dead in the water.
This campaign was the last chance saloon or me – and the Scottish Conservatives – were history.
Marek and I, along with my chief of staff, Dan, and the party’s media director, Adam, were racing back to Holyrood along the M8 after the Glasgow launch event.
The blow-out crunched us up on the hard shoulder in full view of any journalists making the same journey.
Terrified of kickstarting a campaign with headlines such as ‘the wheels come off’ or ‘car crash Tory launch’, I set about changing the tyre with the speed of an F1 pit crew none of as them the three had guys ever admitted changed a wheel before and didn’t know what to do.
It might have been chucking it down, I may have ruined my good suit, but the cheesy grin captured beautifully on my mock-outraged face shows just how much I’m enjoying a bit of one-upmanship on my team. Lord, I’m going to miss moments like that.
I have loved being the Scottish Conservative leader. I know my own strengths and limitations and I fully acknowledge I’m not an ivory academic thinking great thoughts about the ship of state.
Instead of standing back and surveying the whole scene, I prefer rolling my sleeves up and getting stuck in. Working with smart, talented and committed people; getting out on the road and visiting communities, businesses and charities I’ve never met before or want to find out more about.
At its heart, politics is about people. And I take away a thousand conversations in hundreds of corners of Scotland that have surprised me, encouraged me or
made me think. As a country we have so many good stories to tell of people doing amazing things, not seeking recognition or publicity, just quietly getting on with the job. Because politics and political leadership is so intense, and you spend so many more hours beyond the nine-to-five thrown in together, your co-workers are never just colleagues. They are also your friend, your confessor, your defender and promoter. For large parts of the year and definitely during election campaign towered periods, you see them many multiples of time more than your actual family. So it was that when baby Finn was born last year, one of the first people round to visit was Marek and his wife Lisa, toddler son Theo and newborn daughter, Mila. But it turns out Marek isn’t just brilliant at reading data points and research papers, he’s also good at reading people. Last week he came to see me and handed in his resignation.
I hadn’t told him that I was about to go, but he could already tell my heart was no longer in the job and whatever fire I had that had kept me slugging it out for all these years – whacking back at political opponents in the bear pit of Scottish politics – had somehow become dimmed.
Changes in UK politics, personnel and direction played a part, too, but we’d both decided it was time to put our families first.
And, even though we know what comes next will never be as exciting or terrifying or exhilarating as the past eight years, it’s the decision we are choosing to make for the ones we love.
In truth, this moment has been a long time coming. A colleague who knew I’d been a bit scunnered before I had Finn had suggested I use my maternity leave to decide if I wanted to come back at all.
I just about ripped his head off. There was no way I was going to throw women under a bus by suggesting that the mere fact of having a baby meant someone could no longer do their job.
Of course I would come back. Even if my leg was hanging off, I hadn’t slept in months and couldn’t string a sentence together, I would be back.
There was no way I was going to set the precedent – as the first UK political leader to give birth in office – that babies meant automatically giving up the job.
And in April, it was a case of back with a bang. My first week included the party conference in Aberdeen, where, as I was still breastfeeding, I brought Finn with me.
With the pre and post-conference media, my return to parliament and the European elections at the end of May, my first ‘week’ back was actually 19 days straight before a day off, followed by another 12 days.
This is not an appeal for sympathy, it’s just the job.
That’s the normal tempo of things and everyone in politics knows it, accepts it and does it anyway because we love it and think it’s important. But, my word, it is hard on our families.
The politics hadn’t become any more straightforward during my absence either. When I had become pregnant, in February last year, Brexit withdrawal was meant to have been done and dusted by September, in time for the October EU summit. Finn wasn’t due until early November. The plan had been to see Brexit through and then go off on maternity leave with a clean conscience that my deputy would have a clear run at the Scottish Government’s domestic agenda.
BREXIT has become only ever more complicated. And it is an issue over which I am genuinely conflicted, which makes it hard to provide clearsighted leadership. I campaigned for Remain, but I believe in the importance of losers’ consent and have tried at all times to recognise and respect the referendum decision to leave.
That’s not a blank cheque for any kind of Brexit, particularly not one which causes economic shock to the country.
That conflict absolutely affected my ability to lead. In short, I was no longer doing the job to the standard I had set myself or that I expect of myself. Add in the genuine dread at the idea of two election campaigns
That conflict absolutely affected my ability to lead... I made the decision to go and told my team
in 20 months, prompting hundreds of hours, days and weeks on the road away from my young family, and I had to be honest with myself that my time was up.
I made the final decision to go on Monday and told my close team.
We realised there was a lot to do – from deciding whether we wanted a press conference or a pooled interview, writing resignation letters and the main statement, booking the hotel room, organising lecterns and backdrops, informing colleagues both in Scotland and at Number 10, to more mundane issues such as arranging childcare as Finn doesn’t usually go to the childminder on a Thursday morning, and booking a cottage to disappear to for a few days with my family afterwards.
It would take at least a day to organise all of that, so Wednesday became the obvious choice.
But the new Secretary of State for Scotland had a large media round scheduled on Wednesday with his Scotland Office ministers, and I didn’t want to banjax his big day, so Thursday was agreed.
We had a really good communication plan in place to make sure that we were able to land the announcement cleanly.
But all that was blown out of the water when politics went wild with the Prime Minister’s decision to prorogue parliament.
With me set to resign the next day, I couldn’t go on television to discuss it as I would be asked, ‘Are you going to resign over this?’.
THE nation’s broadcasters clearly and justifiably wanted a response from the party leader and were looking to doorstep me, so I nipped home, pulled all of the family’s gear together for going away and left the house a day early to spend Wednesday night at a friend’s flat, phoning Jen at her work to explain the change of plan.
The story started to leak that I might be set to resign and my phone lit up like a Christmas tree.
Wednesday night was horrible. I’d been up since five that morning with Finn anyway, and having decamped to my friend’s flat in Pilton (he was on holiday) with just
‘That’s when my throat catches... there’s another family I’m breaking up
a few bags of gear, it meant I had to try to keep the baby amused without his toys, fed without a high chair or anything else to seat him in, and put him down to sleep in an unfamiliar travel cot that just happened to be delivered by Amazon 30 minutes before I left the house.
All this while fending off a hyperactive spaniel that thought this was the greatest game ever, and answering calls from those we had planned to tell – such as the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State and their teams. On top of this, I was dodging journalists ringing my mobile to try to nail the story down.
I hadn’t eaten for hours and eventually managed to ring for a takeaway as there was no food in the fridge.
Thursday morning was no less chaotic until we managed to get me to the hotel where the announcement would be made, just at the time we had told journalists to come.
I then had a period of stillness, where I could talk to the team, thank them for everything they were doing that day – my chief of staff, Dan, had walked off a flight at 4am that morning, but was by my side, suited and booted, before 9am – and offer greater thanks for everything they had done over the past eight years.
Then it was time to read over the words again and again so they lost their meaning and I wouldn’t show weakness or cry. Deep breath, and into the flashing cameras of the press conference.
Once complete, it was out the door, down the hotel steps and into my car while TV cameras stationed there surged forward, trying to get the leaving shot.
I’m flanked by Dan and Marek, and once in the passenger seat of the car, driven by my parliamentary assistant, Nick, on my way to pick up Finn, I flick through Twitter and see the picture Marek has posted of me changing the wheel.
That’s when my throat catches. Yes, I am leaving the leadership of my party in large part because of my family.
But in many respects, there’s another family I’m breaking up, too.
And I still have to work out how to better combine motherhood with being ‘just’ an MSP, which is in itself more than a full-time job.