Just a few days into the official campaign for the Holyrood elections and Ruth Davidson has had to change her tactics. The plan had originally been for the Scottish Conservatives to run a serious campaign which has fewer tanks than the election campaign, and more serious speeches. ‘We tried that whole idea of you know we’re going to do this really stripped down, just speeches, and just like listening to people bla bla bla,’ says Davidson.
‘And then kind of all the press went this is really boring and we went, yeah, it kind of is.’ And so Davidson has been playing ice hockey, racing blue and red cars, and driving a ski-doo. When we meet, she is touring a very serious looking factory. But even though this serious-looking factory makes hydrogen generators, the Scottish Tory leader still manages to create photo opportunities of her playing darts and table tennis, and pulling a silly face while staring through a large coil of copper. The serious line was never going to hold for long.
What is serious is Davidson’s intention for this to be her party’s ‘best-ever’ performance in Holyrood elections. The Tories have previously never gone above 18 seats in the Scottish Parliament, and are therefore aiming to win 19 or more on 5 May. This means they are vying with an increasingly panicked Scottish Labour party for second place. ‘I think we can,’ says Davidson, when I ask whether the Conservatives can really come second and become the official opposition. ‘I think we are really close to it. Yeah, I think we can.’
This campaign is odd because everyone accepts that the SNP will win the elections, and the story is about who comes second. And because there is no appetite for a change of government, the Conservatives need to encourage an appetite for a change of opposition. ‘I think there is a real feeling in Scotland that something needs to change,’ says Davidson. And it looks as if the government is not going to change so we need a change in the Opposition, you know, one that can really hold the government to account. I think there is a real sense, there has always been a sense in Scotland of a kind of fair play, a really, really defined sense of fair play and the Labour party has had nine years to try to lay a glove on the SNP, and they’ve completely failed.
It is this ability to seem completely comfortable, and a confidence about teasing silly journalists who have indeed just come up from London, that makes Davidson an adept politician. She describes Scottish politics as a ‘full contact sport’, and clearly enjoys that rough and tumble. And she doesn’t mind squaring up to anyone who tries to characterise the Conservatives as toffs, because her background so clearly confounds that. ‘I come from central Scotland, I went to my local comprehensive school, my parents grew up on housing estates, council estates in Glasgow, they left school at 16, none of that stuff sticks to me so in a sense all of that has gone away a bit.’
Her detoxification mission often means that she tries to stand apart from her Westminster Conservative colleagues, attacking policies such as the tax credit cuts in public, and only allowing certain ministers to visit the campaign trail. She bluntly says that the ‘difference between us and the party down South is we are not just the Conservative Party, we are the Conservative and Unionist party: we fight hard’. Fighting hard for the Union has attracted more voters to the Scottish Tories, she says.
Initially, she also tries to separate herself from the current Tory misery by saying she has been too busy in Scotland to notice whether things are going well generally for her party. ‘Well, they’re going well in Scotland. Look, honestly, my head is absolutely stuck in Scottish politics right now, you’d have to ask Zac how it is going in London, and Andrew RT Davies how it is going in Wales.’
I ask again what she thinks of the past few weeks for her party, which have seen the resignation of a Cabinet minister over disability benefit cuts, chaos over the steel industry, and the Prime Minister in a week-long row over his tax arrangements. ‘Things are going well in Scotland!’ she says valiantly. ‘We are going to have our best ever result at Holyrood, we are doing to have more MSPs than ever before! So that’s going to be great.
‘Do you know, honestly? I don’t think the PR advice to the Prime Minister has been great the last few days, but he has answered every question that has been asked of him and all of those voices off from the Labour party that 12 hours ago were demanding his resignation do seem to have slightly stopped and have gone very, very quiet, and I think that’s very telling.’
The Holyrood campaign isn’t really about these issues, though, and the debate is much more about tax and other policies, rather than Westminster or indeed independence. Davidson says the powers handed over by the Scotland Act have led to a ‘more grown up politics’ because it forces the parties to talk about what they’d do, rather than complaining about what Westminster is doing to them. She says:
‘The SNP has been hugely helped that it can spend nine years going around the country saying everything good in Scotland is because we have put money to it and everything is bad because that horrible George Osborne doesn’t give us enough, and of course, if we had the powers we would give everybody everything. Well actually now they do have powers and they are having to behave like a responsible government and tell people no sometimes. That is starting to become in evidence at this election, but it will only really come into play once all these powers come through and so I think the 2021 election in Scotland is going to be markedly different from what’s gone before.’ Whether or not she’s the party leader taking the Scottish Tories into that election depends on whether her stunts with ski-doos pay off in a few weeks’ time.
‘They are going to come back weaker after this election rather than stronger, they are not in a position to be the strong opposition that people need so there is a sense of well look they’ve had their turn, let’s give someone else a try. I’m not making any grand pronouncements that there’s a Damascene conversion all across Scotland and suddenly people are cleaving the Scottish Conservative party to the bosom of their heart and they love me and they love everything that we stand for, but they want us to do a job for them and I’m being really open about what I will do if they vote for us.’ Davidson has been on a mission since taking over as Scottish Tory leader in 2011 to make people love the Scottish Tories again. But as our Scotland Editor Alex Massie has written, there aren’t yet any outward signs of the Conservative renaissance north of the border. Scottish voters don’t yet love the Tories, do they? ‘Tell me more about what the people of Scotland think about me, Isabel, go on. You’ve come up from London, tell me more.’ She laughs, and then adds. ‘You’ve just blushed! Score!’Ruth Davidson just demanded a Hamilton youth coach goes in goal so she can hit a proper penalty #SP16 pic.twitter.com/WsA4tVWUO9— Aidan Kerr (@AidanKerrPol) April 14, 2016
It is this ability to seem completely comfortable, and a confidence about teasing silly journalists who have indeed just come up from London, that makes Davidson an adept politician. She describes Scottish politics as a ‘full contact sport’, and clearly enjoys that rough and tumble. And she doesn’t mind squaring up to anyone who tries to characterise the Conservatives as toffs, because her background so clearly confounds that. ‘I come from central Scotland, I went to my local comprehensive school, my parents grew up on housing estates, council estates in Glasgow, they left school at 16, none of that stuff sticks to me so in a sense all of that has gone away a bit.’
Her detoxification mission often means that she tries to stand apart from her Westminster Conservative colleagues, attacking policies such as the tax credit cuts in public, and only allowing certain ministers to visit the campaign trail. She bluntly says that the ‘difference between us and the party down South is we are not just the Conservative Party, we are the Conservative and Unionist party: we fight hard’. Fighting hard for the Union has attracted more voters to the Scottish Tories, she says.
Initially, she also tries to separate herself from the current Tory misery by saying she has been too busy in Scotland to notice whether things are going well generally for her party. ‘Well, they’re going well in Scotland. Look, honestly, my head is absolutely stuck in Scottish politics right now, you’d have to ask Zac how it is going in London, and Andrew RT Davies how it is going in Wales.’
I ask again what she thinks of the past few weeks for her party, which have seen the resignation of a Cabinet minister over disability benefit cuts, chaos over the steel industry, and the Prime Minister in a week-long row over his tax arrangements. ‘Things are going well in Scotland!’ she says valiantly. ‘We are going to have our best ever result at Holyrood, we are doing to have more MSPs than ever before! So that’s going to be great.
‘Do you know, honestly? I don’t think the PR advice to the Prime Minister has been great the last few days, but he has answered every question that has been asked of him and all of those voices off from the Labour party that 12 hours ago were demanding his resignation do seem to have slightly stopped and have gone very, very quiet, and I think that’s very telling.’
The Holyrood campaign isn’t really about these issues, though, and the debate is much more about tax and other policies, rather than Westminster or indeed independence. Davidson says the powers handed over by the Scotland Act have led to a ‘more grown up politics’ because it forces the parties to talk about what they’d do, rather than complaining about what Westminster is doing to them. She says:
‘The SNP has been hugely helped that it can spend nine years going around the country saying everything good in Scotland is because we have put money to it and everything is bad because that horrible George Osborne doesn’t give us enough, and of course, if we had the powers we would give everybody everything. Well actually now they do have powers and they are having to behave like a responsible government and tell people no sometimes. That is starting to become in evidence at this election, but it will only really come into play once all these powers come through and so I think the 2021 election in Scotland is going to be markedly different from what’s gone before.’ Whether or not she’s the party leader taking the Scottish Tories into that election depends on whether her stunts with ski-doos pay off in a few weeks’ time.
Comments