I have never had anything at all flattering to say about Ruth Davidson. Not just because she’s a Tory, but because she is the kind of political careerist I despise. Somebody who is content to be used by established power in return for the paltry baubles of celebrity status and media attention. Until now, apparently.
What has changed? Not her domestic situation. She was well aware of the kind of commitment she was making when she and her partner decided to start a family. Unless she’s pregnant again, nothing has altered in that regard. If it was going to take time for the realities of juggling family and career to hit home, that time elapsed long before now.
According to that fount of all political wisdom, Tom Gordon (The Herald’s Scottish Political Editor), Davidson returned to Holyrood in May ready to “claim Nicola Sturgeon’s throne”. Let’s hope that fount has an efficient flush.
It’s not Davidson’s domestic circumstances that have changed. Nor is it credible that she’s just appreciated the difficulties of being a mother and an MSP. What has changed is the political context.
I might have found a smidgeon of respect for Ruth Davidson if she’d had the courage to state that the Boris Johnson regime is indefensible. But then she would not have been where she was if she had been a person given to strong convictions.
The good news for the British Conservative & Unionist Party in Scotland (BCUPS) is that they will have no difficulty finding a new ‘leader’. Cast an eye over the British Tories squatting in the Scottish Parliament and you’ll find plenty of people who have neither principles nor self-respect.
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Peter A Bell 
If it is one of the English ones, or the Scottish-cum-English ones, we are in for a rough ride, and I think it must be one of these, although, as I always say, I could be wrong. Dominic Cumming/s is ruthless (pardon the pun) and I feel he might suggest an English or as-good-as English Tory for the next leader of the Scottish branch. No, I am not trying to be provocative and certainly not anti English. I am stating it as I see it. The party under Johnson, who, God Forbid, if he goes to an election, will return with even more MPs than he can count (I would imagine he has already made a pact with Farage on that score and a number of moderate Tories could be ousted in that event) will require an ally in Holyrood, but an ally who will fight the English Nationalist corner (that is what Brexit is) without qualms, as yet another stone in the wall that is being built as we speak to encase Scotland as Brexit forges ahead. Ruth Davidson’s words about the deal were prescient and chime with my own thoughts on the matter, as I articulated the other day: Johnson is not going for broke and a NO Deal, but is trying to revive, in a very slightly tweaked form, May’s Deal, and the MPs will have to vote for it or it all starts over again. As I have said, an election will be disastrous because I have not the slightest doubt that Farage and Johnson have come to an understanding, and the more moderate of the Scottish Tories might well see their tenure come to an end here, too, to be replaced by hard-line Brexiteers. This is a coup, just not in the way that everyone is talking about, because Johnson has utilized an arcane form of constitutional principle and has not actually done anything illegitimate. It is doubtful that the Scottish Court of Session can do much to overturn that, not without challenging both the UKG and the monarch, and because challenging in the domestic courts is almost always going to result in the court backing the government, as they, too, must pay heed to the ‘British’ constitution (unwritten and more or less wholly English). We can hope, however, that the Court of Session will have the cojones to say something unexpected about the Scottish constitutional levers.
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Ruth Davidson is simply the latest in the line of failed ‘Great Unionist Hopes’, a role she assigned herself with ample support from the pro-Unionist press and television outlets. Her short-lived custodianship as Defender of the British Unionist cause in Scotland followed the trajectory and similar ending as those other conviction-free careerists Murphy and Dugdale. (I exclude Gordon Brown from this list as he has never been great at anything, other than catastrophically messing things up like pension provision, financial regulation/de-regulation and his own record short Premiership). That even more witless unthinking Unionist lightweight Jo Swinson will likely be proclaimed the next GUH.
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I think it is hilarious that the next leader of the British Conservative and Unionist Party, Scottish branch, could be a former Republican, and Scottish Independence supporter!
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