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Courtesy of the Times.
How much would you pay to save your pet? Ruth Davidson spent the money she put aside for her wedding on treatment for her cocker spaniel after he was injured by a car. This endeared her to my children, as I suspect it did to many of her social media followers. It’s not just animal lovers who like Ruth; most people do. The Scottish Tory leader seems to get it right in the way that even quite steady, practical ministers like Amber Rudd don’t. On the Windrush fiasco this week she immediately retweeted The Sun’s call to “Let them stay”, while the home secretary floundered. She was the only Tory winner from the last election, with the party adding an astonishing 12 seats in Scotland to help keep Theresa May in power.
Now it seems that Davidson, like various other ambitious politicians, is trying to create a centrist party in Britain. The only difference is that she’s not going to start it from scratch: instead she is quietly taking over the old Conservative Party. The Scottish Tory leader has repeatedly been asked to join new ventures. There are already dozens out there including Legacy, Aspire and Renew, and several yet to be activated by desperate Westminster refugees. Moderate Labourites and Liberal Democrats want her as much as modernising Tories. She has been wooed by an array of lost Cameroons, Blairites and Cleggites, to join their new causes. Instead she has been dining with Tory donors and grandees to discuss a moderate takeover of her own party. Davidson’s brand is based on her decency and loyalty, so she would never force Mrs May out, but she is an excellent planner, as her election results show, and she appears to be putting everything in place so that if needed she could take over.
The Scottish leader can’t recapture the party on her own or backed only by Remainers. It appears she has decided to take Michael Gove as her Brexit ally because they share a socially liberal agenda, while distancing herself from Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson, whom she ridicules mercilessly. The MSP for Edinburgh Central and the environment secretary have become allies, bonding as true Scots over fishing rights post-Brexit. Now they have joined up to launch a youth movement, Onward, which sounds more like a hymn than a party, but is actually a modernising think tank. It aims to find ways of enticing younger voters away from Jeremy Corbyn to the Conservatives. Run by former advisers to David Cameron as well as Mrs May’s former aide Will Tanner, it has the blessing of Downing Street chief of staff Gavin Barwell. Heavyweight MPs such as Tom Tugendhat have signed up, as have party vice-chairmen Kemi Badenoch and Ben Bradley, and the peers Kate Fall and Kate Rock are on the advisory board. It will be launched after the May local elections, when Tory fortunes are likely to dip further. The first policy ideas will cover issues such as housing, job security and the cost of living. The think tank is aimed not just at the millennial generation but at slightly older 30 and 40-somethings from every background and region. Davidson can appeal directly to them: she grew up on a housing estate in Fife, went to a comprehensive and has faced redundancy as well as struggling to buy her first home with her partner, Jen.
The first time I heard about her was from Tom Strathclyde, then leader of the Lords, before she became Tory Scottish leader. “You will love her,” he said, “she’s a lesbian, vodka-swilling, kick-boxing Sunday school teacher, army and BBC-trained ninja.” He has been her champion ever since. Last month, the new deeply trendy editor of Vogue, Edward Enninful, chose her as his political interview in his diversity issue, predicting she could be the first gay prime minister. She has an extraordinary ability to appeal to both radicals and traditionalists. I’ve never seen her be chippy or exclusive. The Democratic Unionist Party may be against gay marriage but when I interviewed their leader Arlene Foster it was clear the two are good friends. She listens to Tory Scottish lairds worrying about their estates and to the homeless with equal interest and maintains her independence while never sounding disloyal to the leadership.
Her vision, beyond being a pragmatic, optimistic, Remainer Scot, lies in her belief that the country needs to become more socially inclusive and more outward looking. As she says, British politics isn’t a question of left or right any more but open versus closed. If she can capture the centre ground and steer the Tory party away from right-wingers like Mr Rees-Mogg, she will be able to use the party’s infrastructure, name, councillors, history and buildings, giving her the advantage over any new party. Unlike David Miliband, touted as another possible saviour, she isn’t a failed politician: at 39 she is still on the rise. All that remains is to persuade 100,000 moderate centrists, not much more than half her Twitter following, to join the Conservative Party and vote for her as leader. Jeremy Corbyn, after all, enticed 300,000 to sign up to take over Labour. Some senior Tory MPs such as Sir Nicholas Soames may be prepared to give up their seats for her, though she has told donors at various dinners that she is not prepared to discuss coming south until after the 2021 Scottish parliament elections. She is determined to use all her skills to try to beat Nicola Sturgeon and become first minister but the Tories are unlikely to win a majority in Scotland. So this would still give her time to go for No 10 in 2022.