THEY were just another Scottish couple out for a walk on a Sunday afternoon.

Clad in coats, scarves, and with a look on the face of one of them that said: "I'd much rather be watching the boxed set of True Detective," the two stroll along a harbour front, bumping shoulders. Yet from such seemingly mundane images is the stuff of Scottish political history made.

For this is no ordinary couple. This is not even an M&S couple. This is Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson and her partner Jen Wilson.

The Scottish Conservatives' latest party election broadcast, which aired on Wednesday ahead of the party's conference in Edinburgh today [FRIDAY], is a mixture of the tush-numbingly mundane and the gob-smackingly radical. It is not news that Ms Davidson is gay.

Since standing for public office her sexuality has been treated as just another part of her make-up, like once working for the BBC and being a dab hand at kick-boxing. She has been pictured with her partner before. So why mark this broadcast out as something remarkable?

Short answer: because it is. Ms Davidson is not just the first openly gay leader of a mainstream party, she is the first to make an election broadcast featuring her partner in a central, spousal role.

That would be quite some achievement in many a country, never mind a nation that only 15 years ago was engaged in verbal combat over the appeal of Section 28, the Tories' mean-minded attempt to bar what they saw as the "promotion" of homosexuality in schools.

Never mind whether Mrs T would have approved. My money would have been on the baroness, like Queen Victoria, believing that lesbians were as real as leprechauns. More pertinent is what Mrs D, Ms Davidson's mother, thinks. She, and Mr D, both of whom are seen in the broadcast, look as proud of their daughter as any chuffed parent, and rightly so.

In an interview with The Herald's Cate Devine last year, Ms Davidson said it was "tiresome" the way her private life met with greater scrutiny than that of the other party leaders just because of her sexuality. All she wanted, she said, was "a bit of parity".

Lest she object to the focus on this election broadcast above all others, it should be said that it was her choice to make the personal a political matter. In making the film she could have gone many another route.

While no one would expect her to use images of her UK leader David Cameron (think of all those Scots and small children going to bed in tears), few would have batted a gnat's eyelash if she had used traditional Tory images of business folk and green and pleasant landscapes. But she did none of this, instead opting for a personal statement of who she is as a Tory, and a person.

Taking a personal tack carries its own risks. It is usually only done by those who are relatively unknown but who want to make a big impact, quickly. Watching Ms Davidson in her parents' kitchen one was reminded of none other than a young Tony Blair.

Her message also called to mind the one he punted in his first election broadcast in 1994, to wit: "We've got to leave the politics of the past behind". Back then, in southern England, Labour was as toxic as the Tories had become in Scotland. Mr Blair was going for an extreme makeover, trying to convince viewers that he was not the same old Labour but a new, business-friendly, improved version.

In the same way, Ms Davidson's broadcast wanted to make it clear that her Tory party could in no way be confused with yon nasty party (copyright Theresa May), down south. She was the face, the embodiment, of the easy like Sunday morning, taking selfies with the missus and the parents, party. Indeed, Ms Davidson went to extraordinary lengths to demonstrate how ordinary she was.

She was from an ordinary home, had been to an ordinary school, done ordinary jobs ("washing dishes, washing tables") as a student. All very media and voter friendly, but how much of this new, improved Scottish Conservatives are Scots willing to purchase? Buy into Ruth, buy into the new Scottish Tories - a tempting BOGOF, or an offer to be greeted with a hearty shout of "Bog off"?

Ms Davidson is an impressive sort. She was quick on her feet over the stamp duty changes, at First Minister's Questions her enthusiasm cannot be faulted, and she is not afraid to speak out when she believes the matter merits it, as when she took to Twitter to denounce as "a steaming pile of nonsense" the flying of flags at half mast for a recently deceased Saudi king.

One wonders how many mouthfuls of coffee were spat over the desk at Downing Street on reading that Tweet. But is being a regular, everyday sort of person enough to endear a Tory leader to Scots voters?

In answering the question, one hopes it is not being too nasty to point out that the Tories have only one MP in Scotland and just 15 out of 129 MSPs. That puts them up there with bird flu in the popularity stakes.

Without wishing to seem unkind, there are parts of Scotland where folk would rather have an appendectomy performed with a butter knife and no anaesthetic than vote Tory. And while the last thing one wishes to do is appear mean-spirited, Ms Davidson would have been better off taking all the money spent on her broadcast and using it to buy as many people as possible a drink.

Even if she borrowed enough cash from Central Office to get everyone over 18 pie-eyed, they would still refuse to vote for her. None of that is too harsh, is it? What's that you say, not nearly harsh enough for a party that in Scotland was the political equivalent of foot and mouth? Come now, let us play nice.

Ms Davidson surely knows how her party stands in Scotland, but none of these home truths will be spoken when the Scottish Conservatives meet in Edinburgh today. Instead, she will be seeking, as everyone in her job has had to do in recent years, to make the Tories look relevant in the modern Scottish political landscape.

Her only hope of improving on the dire performances of the past is to come through the middle between Scottish Labour and the SNP, the same territory the LibDems are eyeing.

Let Labour join forces with the SNP, she will warn, and the price for co-operation will be another independence referendum quicker than one can say "losing the will to live". Can this message, this leader, break through where so many others have failed?

That depends where one stands on the old forgive and forget question that traditionally applies when it comes to Scotland and the Conservatives. Scotland might be transformed