Osborne, May and Johnson will never land the top job for the Tories
Scottish party leader respects the big hitters but says voters may struggle to relate to them
RUTH DAVIDSON is perched on top of a large security barrier – designed to look like a wall – outside the Cabinet Office on Whitehall, grinning as tourists take her photo.
She has already attracted the attention of two nearby security guards, something that seems to happen to the Scottish Conservative leader a lot. Despite joining the Tories just a couple of years before she took on her current job north of the border, Davidson has already made a name for herself in Holyrood and Westminster.
“The party is quite good at picking people that aren’t necessarily the obvious choice,” she explains.
“When David Cameron stood [for leader] he was by far the youngest … he was the outsider, and I think he has done an outstanding job as prime minister, particularly given the issues he has had to deal with.”
“The party can pick winners and doesn’t always pick the obvious choice,” she adds, accidentally acknowledging a widely held view that she could give her Westminster colleagues a run for their money when the time comes to replace him.
She doesn’t rule out a career in the Commons somewhere down the line, but the “loneliness” of the highest office doesn’t appeal. “To be able to deal with that much pressure and make the kind of calls that have to be made in the relentless fashion that they happen; it is really, really lonely. That’s not where my ambition lies; I want to have a life.”
As the potential replacements for Mr Cameron jostle for position, Miss Davidson does not back any of the cur- rent runners and riders, shunning George Osborne, Theresa May and Boris Johnson and instead suggesting it will be one of the 2010 intake that takes on the role.
“I think there’s a few really, really competent and impressive people who demonstrate warmth as well as intelligence and I think that’s quite important in politics,” she says, adding she would “find it very hard to vote for anyone else” if Stephen Crabb, the Welsh Secretary, were on the ballot paper.
She calls herself a “black swan”, having come to politics after a career in journalism and without connections in the party; and has a clear affection for colleagues who come from similar backgrounds to her own, dubbing Crabb her “political soulmate”. The importance of being open and honest is something Davidson often comes back to – though she admits it has got her into trouble in the past. “People aren’t daft, they can tell. They can tell if you mean it or not. Like, just don’t say stuff you don’t mean and you’ll always keep yourself honest – it’s not rocket science, but yeah …maybe some people don’t understand the worth of it. It’s hard won and easy lost.”
She speaks respectfully of big hitters like Osborne and May but stumbles over whether they have the warmth to win over voters as the next leader.
“Personality matters – it matters more now than it ever used to. I wouldn’t say any of them aren’t, you know, warm … I maybe have a different view from the general public because I know them personally and I would say that they all have a great personal warmth,” she says.
Davidson points out that moving from leader of the Scottish party to the backbenches in Westminster would be a demotion for her, adding that nobody walks into a ministerial position. But Davidson admits she won’t discount it. “People understand that you can move between parliaments and still do a job,” she explains. “I wouldn’t ever rule it out but I think there’s a few more miles left in me in the job I’m currently in.”
She would do away with walking through the lobbies to vote however. “The idea that you have to file into lobbies and it just takes hours and hours and hours is just a really bad use of everyone’s time. It’s not beyond the wit of man to look at parliaments around the world where electronic voting occurs.”
The former BBC and local radio journalist has a reputation for straight talking. She publicly challenged Cameron over tax credits, telling him at the time: “If we’re not the party of getting people into work and making it easier for them to get up the tree, then what are we there for? It’s not acceptable.”
Coming out as a lesbian when she was relatively unknown in Scottish politics and fighting an election was a bold thing to do. But she admits that being openly gay was difficult in the beginning. “Because nobody knew who I was and I hadn’t been elected very long, my worry was that I would suddenly be seen as that gay politician and that would be a box I was put in and it wouldn’t matter what I said about the constitution or health because it would always come back to that.
“I, you know, perhaps I wasn’t even as comfortable in myself as I could be, even as a 32-year-old adult. You know it’s ….still something you grow with, and yeah …. I mean I didn’t want to be dismissed because I had so many other battles to fight.”
One of them was not having many connections in the party. Her father was a mill manager and she grew up in Selkirk in the Scottish borders. Despite coming from behind she has a good relationship with David Cameron, who once called her the “ideal leader”.
She is preparing to fight elections to the Scottish parliament in May, which could see the Tories overtake Labour, if recent polling is anything to go by. And while the party is providing the biggest war chest north of the border for at least six years, there is no doubt who is running the show.
“The election we just had in May was the PM’s election as the head of the UK party but this one, this one I kind of get to run myself which is quite nice”,
‘The election we just had in May was the PM’s election ... but this one, this one I kind of get to run myself ...’
Davidson says.
The threat of a second referendum has played into the Conservatives’ hands, she explains, after both Labour and the Liberal Democrats said they would allow their members to campaign for independence if the question was put to the Scottish people again.
The SNP was “wildly wide of the mark” on economic issues and that has worried some voters, Davidson says, adding that people are “waking up to the fact that this was never something that was credible”.
She doesn’t believe a second referendum is inevitable and argues that the devolution of taxes north of the border means this is the first election in years where a cross in the box could cost voters money. “For the last four elections in Scotland, it doesn’t matter who you voted for because it didn’t cost you anything to have that vote, so it was a bit of a spending competition which is never good for a centre right party.
“This one you know there is an argument there and a very strong belief in the Scottish Conservatives that you shouldn’t have to pay more tax in Scotland than the rest of the UK.”
And despite the friendly Twitter exchanges between herself, SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon and Labour’s Scottish leader Kezia Dugdale, it’s going to be hard fought.
“I don’t think anyone would accuse any of the three of us of being shrinking violets,” she says, grinning. “None of us takes a knife to a gun fight; do you know what I mean?”
‘I think there’s a few really, really competent and impressive people who demonstrate warmth as well as intelligence’