Ruth davidson

Thursday

Sam Kriss

How depressing when people over-identify with their ethnicity

I am a Jew. I live in a council estate in London where considerably more than half of my neighbours are Muslims. These people aren’t my friends, but we get along fine: I pick up their parcels; we coordinate complaints to the council about the strange, blue-tinged fluid that sometimes drips from everyone’s ceilings, as if someone in the penthouse had decided to fill their flat with jelly. Elsewhere, our distant cousins are doing terrible things to each other. It’s increasingly hard to imagine a world in which these distant cousins can live together, intermingled but mostly minding their own business – but that’s exactly what we do every day

Thursday

Stephen Daisley

The preventable death of the Scottish Tories

The Ruth Davidson era is over. It has been three years since the now Baroness Davidson stood down as leader of the Scottish Tories, but the last decade of opposition politics has belonged to her. It was Davidson who parlayed opposition to independence into tactical support for the Scottish Conservatives, convincing a section of older, blue-collar Labour voters to lend her their vote to stop the SNP. In doing so, she took the Tories from third to second place at Holyrood and, in 2017, to their biggest win in a general election since the days of Margaret Thatcher. What she failed to do was make the Scottish Tories a viable

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

The Tory strategist behind Scottish Labour’s revamp

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar is being advised by a key figure behind ex-Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson’s political brand, Coffee House can reveal. Eddie Barnes, a former spinner for Davidson when she led the party, has been helping Scottish Labour during the Holyrood campaign with messaging and voter strategy. He helped craft Davidson’s cheery, accessible image as she brought her party back from the brink of extinction in Scotland. It’s not difficult to see his influence in the way Sarwar has led an upbeat and confident campaign with attention-grabbing moments such as this dance class. Barnes works for Gordon Brown’s pro-Union think tank Our Scottish Future but has also

Saturday

Stephen Daisley

Ruth Davidson’s exit reveals Scottish Tories’ independence secret

Ruth Davidson has used her final speech to the Scottish Conservative conference to appeal to pro-Union voters. In a video streamed on the first day of the event, the former party leader said Scotland had passed ‘peak Nat’ and that, while the SNP was bound to emerge as the largest party after the May 6 devolved elections, the Tories could still deprive Nicola Sturgeon of an overall majority. This was imperative, she said, so that the Scottish Government could be ‘held in check’. She contended: If there’s no check on an SNP government after May, they will put their obsession with securing a second independence referendum above Scotland’s national interest.

Thursday

Philip Patrick

The cautionary tale of the Christian teacher who criticised Ruth Davidson

When Richard Lucas, a maths teacher, uploaded a video criticising former Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson for having what he called a ‘fatherless child’, he anticipated some controversy. But, nearly three years on, Lucas is still shocked by the reaction it sparked. Lucas, who is a Christian, was hauled in front of the General Teaching Council for Scotland. Finally, this month, a panel threw out allegations that his comments were ‘offensive and discriminatory’ and allowed him to continue to work as a teacher. Lucas believes his teaching career is effectively over In reality the decision means little: the controversy sparked by the video, in which Lucas says that ‘children have