Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Ruth Davidson’s departure would mean the end of the Scottish Conservatives

Ruth Davidson is set to quit as Scottish Conservative leader. A party source is quoted in the Scottish Sun saying Davidson’s departure will be as a result of the ‘huge pressure’ of new motherhood — she gave birth to a son, Finn, last October — and finding herself ‘at increasing odds with the new leadership in London’.

What can we take from this? Twinning her objections to no-deal Brexit with the toll of mothering while in a high-pressured job dilutes her resignation as a protest against the course Number 10 has chosen today. And Davidson has been in politics (and before that journalism) long enough to know that. So this is less of a calculated strop and more of a moment of personal and political reckoning: family and personal health can be juggled with a demanding role, but is it really worth it when your party has strayed so far from the path you believe in? Davidson has evidently decided it’s not. 

That doesn’t mean Brexit gets off the hook. It may not be the only reason she is going, but it is still a reason. Davidson campaigned vigorously for Remain (much more vigorously than her opposite number Nicola Sturgeon) but accepted the result and the steadily harder version of Brexit pursued by Downing Street, culminating in Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement. But no-deal Brexit was somewhere she could not go, not least as a would-be first minister of a country that voted 62 per cent Remain. That is a stubborn fact the Tories at Westminster have never faced up to and the Brexit they have pursued is one that has bolstered the SNP’s polling numbers and subdued Davidson’s Tory revival. 

That revival was something else. Elected leader in 2011, Davidson slogged her guts out turning a moribund rump with little support outside Scotland’s rural south to the main opposition in the Scottish Parliament and the second largest Scottish contingent at Westminster.

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