Yes, I’m going to be Baroness Davidson of Lundin Links but I won’t be using my fancy name... I’ll still be Ruth. I’ll always be Ruth
3 stones lighter, a new home by the sea, wedding plans and, oh yes, a seat in the Lords, meet the reinvented - and rejuvenated - Ruth Davidson
SHE is one of the most recognisable faces in Scottish politics. But as she prepares to enter the House of Lords, there is something different about Ruth Davidson. It is not just the change of title – she is now officially Baroness Davidson of Lundin Links, a nod to the Fife village where she grew up. And it is not just the three-stone loss of weight, having grown tired of political cartoonists ‘drawing me as a circle’.
Like many who have left high-pressure political roles, Baroness Davidson – although she insists, ‘I’m still Ruth, I’ll always be Ruth’ – is visibly rejuvenated, beaming in the sunshine of Regent Road Park, which looks over the Scottish parliament where for years she duelled with Nicola Sturgeon.
On Tuesday, she will take up her seat in the House of Lords, in a radical new chapter of her political career.
As well as moving work, she is moving house – down the coast to East Lothian. And she and partner Jen also have their young son to keep them busy.
Ms Davidson said: ‘Finn’s two and a half, he’ll be three in October. It’s a really fascinating age. They’re just learning so much new stuff, and they’re just hilarious.
‘No one tells you your kids are the funniest people in the world.’
It was Finn’s birth that prompted her to resign as Scots Tory leader in 2019 and, after a brief return to the front line, standing in for Douglas Ross at Holyrood, it is Finn who has dominated her life since May’s election.
She said: ‘You see plenty of people desperate to get back in, that’s not me. I feel blessed to have done the job, but I feel really grateful to be able to do the stuff that I was not able to do before. I’ll be in London a couple of days a week, but when I’m home I’ll be physically home.
‘Finn’s animal crackers. Three weekends ago I took him to the zoo, a couple of weekends ago I took him to Deep Sea World.
‘Last weekend, I took him to a horse-riding place for kids over two, put him on the back of a horse and he was led around for half an hour and he loved it.’
It is a time for a change for the former Scots Tory leader. New parliament, new title and new home. ‘We’re moving house down the coast to East Lothian,’ she said. ‘Jen and I both grew up in small coastal communities. I grew up in a village in the East Neuk, she grew up in County Wexford, on the southeast [Irish] coast.
AND although we had very different upbringings, one thing we had in common was growing up in a community, where you have that security of everyone knows everyone else, and everyone knows everyone’s children.
‘Where you can walk your dogs on the beach. We’re really looking forward to it.’
The couple have plans to marry and are hoping for another child.
‘Yeah, we probably should get round to that, we’ve been engaged for about six or seven years,’ she said. ‘One of the things that was always a consideration was that I couldn’t get married in a church, or in my church.
‘But they took a big step closer to it at this General Assembly. It passed pretty much unnoticed, but the Church of Scotland is well on the way now.’
Ms Davidson became Scots Tory leader within months of becoming an MSP in 2011, and led the party for eight years.
She carved a reputation as a political battler, fighting two referendums, seven elections, and taking on all-comers from Holyrood to high-profile TV debates.
When her stock was at its highest – before the EU referendum – she was seen as a potential future Prime Minister. Now, as she heads to Westminster, she artfully sidesteps questions about a UK Government role: ‘That’s not what I’m turning my attention to at the moment.’
However, she has promised Jen that any return to the political front line will wait until Finn – and any potential future children – are in school. ‘I want to be a mum for a bit. I’ve spent every Sunday morning taking Finn to baby gymnastics, before that we did baby swimming. I’m going to take him to football when he turns three,’ she said.
‘Hopefully, I won’t be a horrible, pushy mum. But I can totally see myself, five years from now, ten years from now, driving the minibus to some away match. I can totally see myself washing all the kits.
‘That was my mum actually, she was on the PTA, doing everything, always running the kids everywhere, even took the cycling proficiency classes at the school, despite not being a cyclist. Doing bakes for the bake sale. I’m not a bad baker, I was on Bake Off.’
Despite such grand plans, she intends to leave some time for politics. ‘I’m looking forward to learning new things. I feel like the debate in Scotland had stalled and I often felt I was standing up saying the same thing as I’d said before,’ she admitted.
‘And one of the things I’m looking forward to is being able to pick and choose different topics to speak on.
‘I did a documentary earlier this year on gambling reform. There’s a White Paper that’s due to be published by the end of the year.
‘That’s going to come to the House of Lords. I think that’s something that affects everybody. It’s about
super-casinos. It’s about how you regulate the internet. It’s about all these different things. I think that’s really interesting and I want to get involved in that debate.’
She added: ‘It’s not just people losing their shirts over this, it’s people losing their lives. It’s estimated that a person a day commits suicide due to gambling-related harm. That’s a lot of people.’
Another focus, from the red benches of the House of Lords, will be the thorny issue of assisted dying – which Ms Davidson voted against legislating on, while in Holyrood.
‘I want to get involved in that debate. My position has changed over the years,’ she said
‘I voted against [the late independent MSP] Margo [Macdonald]’s Bill. Partly because there were flaws in the Bill, and that gave lots of us an out, who were conflicted by it.
‘But also, because of my own experiences actually, and my experience of having my son.
‘When you do something like IVF, the amount of choice and control you have at the start of life, the idea that there is no agency, there is no control, at the end of life.’
She added: ‘Again, you’re looking at hundreds of people committing suicide each year, because they’re in chronic pain, because they have life-limiting conditions.
‘Or they’re spending money to go to Dignitas abroad, and there’s a split between the haves and havenots. People who do go abroad end their lives earlier than they would wish to, and have less time with their families.
‘It might not be that now is the time to bring this in, but it is time for the country to start talking about it.
‘I don’t think it’s fair, after an election, to suddenly legislate for it. I think you need to bring the country on that journey, both north and south of the Border.’
MS Davidson’s career has been defined by two referendums. In the successful Better Together campaign of 2014, she carved out a reputation as one of the Union’s strongest advocates, leading to her party leapfrogging Labour in the 2016 election, to become the official opposition in Scotland.
But in the 2016 EU referendum, she was part of the doomed Remain campaign, putting herself on the opposite side to Boris Johnson and many Tory colleagues.
Her relationship with the Prime Minister has often been fraught. She backed three candidates against him for the Tory leadership in 2019 – and she laughed while admitting her surprise that he had sanctioned her move to the House of Lords.
‘I’m astonished he signed it off,’ she said. ‘Genuinely astonished. When it came through, I was like, “Are you f ****** kidding me?”’
And the Prime Minister should not expect an easy time in return.
‘Do you know what’s great about the House of Lords? Part of the oath that you sign up to is that you have to be independent minded,’ she said.
‘You can tell your whips to naff off if required. That suits me just fine. I don’t think I’ve ever been accused of being lobby fodder, and I’m not going to be.’
She added: ‘I do sometimes think
I’m looking forward to being able to choose different topics’
my government is wrong, and I’m going to say it.
‘But I do also think they’ve made a lot of calls right. Offering a path to citizenship to British passport holders in Hong Kong, is the right thing to do.’
Another thing she welcomes is the UK Government’s attempt to crack down on illegal and harmful activity online, such as images of child sexual abuse, revenge porn, hate speech and posts relating to suicide and eating disorders.
Ms Davidson said: ‘The Online Harms Bill – they’re going to get so much flak for that, parts of the Bill will be obsolete by the time it’s published, they won’t go far enough for some people, far too far for others, brickbats from all sides – but they’re grasping one of the big issues of our day.’
In the coming months, she will start a new job and move into a new house – but there was a time when her sights were set on a different office, and she hoped to be waking up in Bute House.
However, there are clearly few regrets, and she is more keen to measure the progress made, than the distance by which her party fell short.
‘I think it was always going to be a stretch for us, in terms of timescales,’ she said.
‘When I got elected in 2011, I was the only new Conservative in there. I was the youngest, the least experienced. We’d 15 seats, if we lost a single MSP, we’d cease to be a major party. It would affect our short money. I took the party as far as I could take it, and I’ve given Douglas [Ross] a strong platform, and I salute his ability to find 100,000 new Tory voters. That’s not shabby, he worked really hard and did well.’
However, she still believes there will be a Conservative First Minister one day. ‘Absolutely. And I think the history of Scotland shows that every time people think a party has become a baked-in certainty, and it gets hubris, then it spectacularly collapses in on itself,’ she said.
‘I’ve always said the SNP will not be brought down by any single opposition party. They will be brought down by their own hubris.
‘And I think we’re beginning to see that fight start now, within the SNP. The pendulum might swing slowly in Scotland, but it swings pretty resoundingly.’
The SNP is facing a police investigation into party finances and use of donations, and several officeholders have resigned, citing chief executive Peter Murrell’s refusal to open up the accounts.
Ms Sturgeon faces another challenge – as the country, hopefully, recovers from the Covid crisis, attention will once again turn to her record in government. ‘There’s a point at which people look at what a government says, and what they have delivered,’ Ms Davidson said.
SHE added: ‘They talk a good game, but if you are an islander who can’t get across to the mainland because the ferry has been taken out of service again, you don’t think much of their delivery. If you are a parent whose children have had, not just two years’ worth of terrible decisions over exams, but have seen course choices narrow, opportunities reduce and standards of education fall, you don’t think much of their delivery.
‘If you’ve been diagnosed with cancer and you’re waiting to be seen, and the waiting time guarantee that you’ve been promised is broken, like it has been for thousands of Scots, you don’t think much of their delivery. Apart from independence, what is her vision?’
She believes the bottled-up energy and frustration from lockdown will spark calls for change and better leadership from all levels of government.
She is also proud of the work her Holyrood team did. ‘They were working all the hours God sends, to help people, point them in the right direction, get them access to funds, and advocate on their behalf.
‘Some of the stories were heartbreaking and some of the victories were punch-the-air, on behalf of other people.’
As she moves to a new parliament, a new job and new challenges, it is clear Baroness Davidson of Lundin Links – or just plain Ruth – is already plotting many more of these punch-the-air moments.
I’ve always said the SNP will be brought down by their hubris