This is an edited transcript of Ruth Davidson’s speech at last night’s launch of Onward, a new liberal Conservative think tank:
Sometimes the Tories just look a bit dour. You know, we look a bit joyless. Fair? A bit authoritarian sometimes. We don’t get to win if we start hectoring the people that we need to vote for us. We don’t get to just say ‘Please stand on the right’ like every tube message out there. We’ve got to learn to be a bit more joyful and that’s something that I think that we have tried to learn in Scotland.
Trust me, when I started out in the Tory party in Scotland in Glasgow in 2009, if you weren’t a blind optimist, the Scottish Conservatives really weren’t for you! I had my first by-election in Glasgow North East when Michael Martin, the great Speaker, stood down and it was beyond unwinnable. But I have to say it was the most fantastic fun I have had in politics.
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