Ruth Elizabeth Davidson, Baroness Davidson of Lundin Links (born 10 November 1978), is a Scottish politician. A member of the House of Lords since 2021, she was Leader of the Scottish Conservative Party from 2011 to 2019 and Leader of the Scottish Conservative Party in the Scottish Parliament from 2020 to 2021. She served as a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for Glasgow from 2011 to 2016 and for Edinburgh Central from 2016 to 2021.
Davidson is co-host of Sky News podcast Electoral Dysfunction alongside Beth Rigby and Baroness Harman.
Born in Edinburgh, Davidson was raised in Selkirk and later attended Buckhaven High School in Fife. After graduating from the University of Edinburgh, she worked as a BBC journalist and served in the Territorial Army as a signaller. After leaving the BBC in 2009 to study at the University of Glasgow, she joined the Conservative Party. At the 2011 Scottish Parliament election, Davidson was elected on the Glasgow regional list. Following party leader Annabel Goldie's resignation in May 2011, Davidson stood in the subsequent leadership election.
She won the contest and was declared party leader on 4 November 2011. In 2016, the Conservatives replaced the Labour Party as the second-largest party in the Scottish Parliament. Davidson resigned the leadership in August 2019, shortly after Boris Johnson became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. She was succeeded by Jackson Carlaw who was replaced by Douglas Ross. After leading the party in Holyrood for several months, Davidson stood down at the 2021 Scottish Parliament election. In 2021, she was appointed a life peer in the House of Lords.
Davidson was generally considered a fairly successful leader, especially in 2016 and 2017. Ideologically, she is considered a centrist. She supported Scotland remaining part of the United Kingdom in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. In the years after 2014, she continued to appeal to "No" voters in the referendum on that basis along with opposition to a second vote. She supported the UK remaining in the European Union in the 2016 EU membership referendum.
Davidson was born at the Edinburgh Royal Maternity Hospital and Simpson Memorial Maternity Pavilion. She was raised in Selkirk and later in Lundin Links, Fife. Her family lived in Raeburn Place and then Bridgelands Road, Selkirk, and Davidson attended Knowepark Primary School until Primary 3. Her father, Douglas, a mill manager at Laidlaw & Fairgrieve, had played professional football for Partick Thistle F.C. in his younger days and was a midfielder for Selkirk F.C. during the late-1970s and early-1980s. When her father took a job in the whisky industry, the family left the Borders for Fife, where she attended the state secondary Buckhaven High School. Her parents voted Conservative but were not especially involved in politics.
Davidson studied English literature at the University of Edinburgh, gaining an undergraduate Master of Arts (MA Hons) degree. After graduation, she joined the Glenrothes Gazette as a trainee reporter. She later moved to Kingdom FM, followed by Real Radio, and finally joined BBC Scotland in late 2002 where she worked as a radio journalist, producer, presenter and reporter. She left the BBC in 2009 to study International Development at the University of Glasgow. She also served as a signaller in the 32 Signal Regiment of the Territorial Army for three years (2003–06) before suffering a back injury in a training exercise at Sandhurst.
In 2009, after having left the BBC to study at the University of Glasgow, Davidson joined the Conservative Party. She said she was inspired by a call by David Cameron, the then Leader of the Opposition, in the wake of the United Kingdom parliamentary expenses scandal, for people who had never previously been political to get involved in politics. She was encouraged by the Scottish Conservative Party's Director of Media, Ramsay Jones, to join the party and stand for the House of Commons seat of Glasgow North East at the 2009 by-election, which was triggered by the resignation of Labour MP and Speaker of the House, Michael Martin. She finished in third place, with 1,075 votes (5.2% share of the vote).
From early 2010 to March 2011, she worked as the head of the private office of the then Scottish Conservative leader, Annabel Goldie. She played a large part in the organisation of campaign media events in the run-up to the 2010 general election, at which she ran again in Glasgow North East, finishing in fourth place with 1,569 votes (a 5.3% share of the vote).
Election to Scottish Parliament and first roles
For the 2011 Scottish Parliament election, Davidson contested the Glasgow Kelvin constituency and was initially placed second on the Conservatives' Glasgow region list, behind Malcolm Macaskill. A few months before the election it was reported in the press that Macaskill had failed to fully disclose his business career to party members ahead of a 2010 internal party selection contest. On 24 March, Andrew Fulton, the Chairman of the Scottish Conservatives, decided that Macaskill was to be deselected, thereby promoting Davidson to the first position in the Glasgow regional list. This led to protests from the supporters of Macaskill, and some major donors withdrew their financial support for the party. In the election, after coming a distant fourth in Glasgow Kelvin, Davidson was elected to the Scottish Parliament from the Glasgow region list. After the election she was appointed by Goldie as the Conservative spokesperson for Culture, Europe and External Relations.
Leadership of the Scottish Conservative Party
After a poor result for her party at the election, Annabel Goldie resigned as Scottish Conservative leader on 9 May 2011. Davidson became a contender in the subsequent leadership election. Her rivals later claimed that Davidson received assistance from Party headquarters, though her supporters stated that these claims were part of a smear campaign. She stood against three other candidates – Murdo Fraser, Jackson Carlaw and Margaret Mitchell. Fraser stood on a platform of separating the Scottish Conservatives from the UK-wide party and establishing a new Scottish centre-right party. Davidson announced her candidacy on 4 September and vehemently opposed Fraser's proposals to separate the party, calling it a "distraction" which would "tie the party in knots". Academic Alexander Smith described Davidson as ideologically aligned with the party's centrists while Fraser was associated with the party's right.
Davidson's campaign was endorsed by two MSPs and a former Secretary of State for Scotland, Lord Forsyth. She was also supported by David Mundell, the sole Conservative MP in Scotland. Despite being a List MSP for Glasgow, she failed to gain the endorsement of a single chairperson of any of the five Conservative Constituency Associations in Glasgow and over half the MSP group had supported Murdo Fraser.
On 11 September 2011, Davidson sacked her election agent and parliamentary assistant Ross McFarlane. He had been filmed trying to burn a European Union flag in a Glasgow street following a University Conservative Association (GUCA) St Andrew's Day dinner in November 2010. On 5 October 2011, the Scottish Conservative media director Ramsay Jones was suspended from his duties during the leadership contest, after it was revealed that he had met Davidson and her campaign team in her flat on Sunday, 18 September.
Davidson subsequently won the leadership election and was made the leader of the Scottish Conservatives on 4 November 2011. She gained 2,278 first preference votes out of the 5,676 votes cast, after second preference votes were counted, she won by 2,983 votes to runner up Murdo Fraser's 2,417. This sparked some discontent within the party, with prominent party supporter Paul McBride resigning from the party and party donor John McGlynn criticised her election, saying that she was elected through "interference".
At Davidson's first Scottish Conservative conference leadership speech, she announced the introduction of a new Logo for the Scottish Conservatives featuring an eight-pronged cross arguing that it was "distinctly Scottish but with colours which clearly reflect our pride in the United Kingdom". At her first electoral test at the 2012 local elections the Scottish Conservatives lost seats, leading to some worry and talk of a leadership coup in party circles. According to a profile by Ian Leslie in the New Statesman, the early part of Davidson's leadership was difficult. She made what he called a "prolonged and embarrassing climb-down" from a pledge to oppose any further devolution of powers to the Scottish parliament and struggled in parliamentary debates with Alex Salmond. Although, he also writes that she began to get attention through social media and reformed the party's processes of selecting candidates for the Scottish Parliament. David Torrance wrote that after a year in office Davidson "had little to show in terms of policy development, strategic direction or opinion polls". Telegraph columnist Alan Cochrane was deeply critical writing in his diary at the time that:She [Davidson] is totally and utterly useless and so are her team. They haven’t a bloody clue but she is the problem – big problem. Not up to the job, as Attlee would say, and I suspect that some hacks will start asking questions. [David] Mundell said he knew she wasn’t cutting the mustard . . . But he claims they’ve got someone lined up to help her. Christ, they need it. They’re all just bairns [children] in her office and I suspect the Tory MSPs ain’t helping her.Davidson began to "modernise" the party's stance in the mould of changes Cameron was also making at the time. Expressing support for greater devolution and same-sex marriage. As time passed, a few positive signs began to appear for Davidson's electoral prospects. The upcoming referendum attracted more support in the sense of activists and financial assistance to the party. Cameron’s Caledonian Conundrum, a 2013 report by Michael Ashcroft into the Conservatives electoral prospects in Scotland, identified a substantial number of voters outside their base of support that were attracted by aspects of the Conservative brand such as seeing Cameron as the best candidate for prime minister or agreeing with the Conservative argument on the economy. These potential swing voters had "a generally positive view" of Davidson remembering things about her, such as an incident when she had been asked for ID to drink alcohol at an event. John Curtice noted a small increase in the party's support in Scotland between 2012 and 2014. In the 2014 European Election, the Conservatives modestly increased their vote share in Scotland while losing support elsewhere.