ANALYSIS: Maybe Westminster will now believe that Ruth Davidson will never be Prime Minister
3 min read
In a crowded field, it has probably been the most boring Westminster guessing game of recent years.
Forget ‘When will Boris challenge Theresa’ or ‘Will the Labour Party split’. For my money, the ‘When will Ruth Davidson just admit that she wants to come to Westminster and lead the Tories’ beats either of those snoozeathons hands down.
Commentators and Tory MPs - at least those on the Remainy/Cameroon wing of the party - have driven themselves half-daft trying to work out the convoluted process by which the Scottish Tory leader could come south and succeed Theresa May.
The fact that she is not an MP and is therefore, under party rules, barred from standing in any contest, did not prevent the increasingly-fevered speculation.
One theory was that she would remain in Scotland until the 2021 Holyrood election and, assuming the Tories lost, be found a safe seat for the general election due the following year. Once in Westminster, she could bide her time and make a pitch for the top job when a vacancy arose.
The most recent - and possibly the most implausible - suggestion was that Davidson would accept a peerage next year, earn her spurs in a Cabinet job, and be in prime position to challenge for the crown when the time comes.
This rather neglected the fact that she is due to give birth in a few weeks and rather reluctant to leave her baby to commute to London every week.
Friends of Davidson were similarly unimpressed, describing the speculation as “bollocks”.
But no matter how hard the notion of ‘Ruth Davidson MP’ was stamped on, it refused to go away.
All that should now change, however, thanks to a remarkably-candid interview she has given to the Sunday Times’ peerless Decca Aikenhead.
Asked if she wanted to be Prime Minister one day, she replied: “No. I value my relationship and my mental health too much for it. I will not be a candidate.”
The interview, timed to publicise Davidson’s forthcoming book on high-achieving women, is also noteworthy for her honesty in revealing her battles with mental illness as a student, a time marked by suicidal thoughts, self-harm and depression.
Her comments on the Tory leadership will not be a surprise to anyone who has been paying the slightest bit of attention to what Davidson has said in the last two years. At no point has she given any encouragement to the speculation, but if anything that has only served to heighten it.
Of course, Westminster being as it is, there will be some who simply refuse to believe her.
“It’ll be seen by some as part of the plan,” one ally told me.
And for moderate Tories who view Davidson as the Queen over the water, their great hope for the future, her comments will come as a bitter blow.
But they will have to reconcile themselves to this reality; Ruth Davidson will never be Prime Minister for the simple reason that she doesn’t want to be.
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