David Cameron had the best warm-up act possible today for his speech: before he was speaking, Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson had her turn. It’s a bit odd to describe someone who has been Scottish Tory leader since 2011 as a ‘rising star’, but the truth is that Davidson’s profile has been rising over the past year, and not just because of the Scottish referendum. Her speech was a pretty good demonstration of why this MSP should get an even higher profile in the Tory party across the UK: passionate, insightful, clear and human.
Seb explains her key message, which was that the Tories cannot be ‘seen as decent technocrats’, here. Her fear of the ‘decent technocrats’ was provoked partly by a meeting that Davidson held yesterday in Manchester, not with some fellow Tories, but with a group of young people. She went along with Welsh Secretary Stephen Crabb to a youth project called RECLAIM that supports and inspires working class young people – and I tagged along with them to see what these two politicians were up to.
Davidson described the group of teenagers as ‘the most impressive, articulate, passionate people you could ever hope to meet’, and she wasn’t overdoing the praise: they were great.
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