WOULD you buy a used Skoda from Ruth Davidson? One might have thought politicians would steer clear of car references given what happened to Tricky Dicky when he was compared to a second-hand car salesman. But no. Nixon might have come a cropper but the new, improved Scottish Tories are made of stronger, shinier stuff. Haven’t you heard?

This week, the party’s leader in Scotland unveiled a new party political broadcast. Also this week, the Scottish Secretary, David Mundell, announced he was gay and was greeted with best wishes all round. If ever the party had a moment to show how much it, and Scotland, had changed in the past decade this was it.

First, that broadcast. Day-to-day life in Scotland, shoppers shopping, drivers driving, hill walkers walking, was speeded up. The message: life in Scotland does not stand still and neither do we; either that or the director had eaten an entire tin of Quality Street and was in the grip of a sugar rush.

Then came the voiceover. Scotland needs a “strong” opposition, we were told, someone to hold the SNP to account and stand up for a “strong” Scotland as part of a “strong” United Kingdom. Given the preponderance of the word strong, we were either being punted a new brand of toilet paper or someone wanted to show they would not be pushed around, like some other parties they could mention.

The Herald:

“So what about Ruth Davidson’s Conservatives?” the cheery man on voiceover posited. Clearly expecting a sneering, “Aye, what about them” from the viewer, voiceover man told us we would be surprised at what people think. There followed three Scots telling us they were variously worried about the threat of a one-party state, the strength of the Union, family finances, and alligators coming up the toilet bowl. Perhaps that last one was misheard. Anyway, the main attraction was up next.

Cut to Ms Davidson sitting in a kitchen looking as warm and twinkly as Mary Berry with an extra dusting of icing sugar. “I’ll hold the SNP to account,” she said. I’ll do this. I’ll do that. Sheesh, it’s all about you, isn’t it Ruth?

And why not? She has got under the bonnet of the Scottish Tories, fine tuning this and ditching that. Do not take my word for it; she can make her own car comparisons. Remember the rubbish Skoda, she told BBC Newsnight. When VW bought the brand it had a choice: re-badge the motors as VWs, or make them better. VW chose to make the car better, she said, and that’s what she is trying to do with the Scottish Conservatives.

Mention VW today and most folk will think of the emissions scandal. Should we take Ms Davidson at her word and believe that everything is now coming up roses with the Tories, or should Scotland hold its collective nose at a suspicious whiff coming from the party’s rear-axle area?

Parties reinvent themselves all the time. Barack Obama’s Democratic Party is a world away from Woodrow Wilson’s, just as Wilson’s was from Andrew Jackson’s. David Cameron attempted much the same kind of makeover as Ms Davidson when he went through his hug-a-hoodie and cuddle-a-husky phase. Then there is the transformation wrought by Peter Mandelson and Neil Kinnock on Labour in the late 1980s and early 90s. It is this which perhaps offers the closest comparison to what Ms Davidson is attempting.

In both the New Labour and New Scottish Conservatives case, both leaders inherited a toxic brand that had to be made safe for voter consumption once more. Mr Kinnock had to erase from the collective memory the image of snaking dole queues and strikes. The Scottish Tory leader has to erase the memory of the party that caused those queues and strikes. Let us not underestimate the challenge Ms Davidson is facing. Once upon a time, the Tories used to do not too badly in Scotland. In 1955 they had a 50 per cent share of the vote. Even in the 1992 election, post-poll tax and the annihilation of traditional industries, they won 26 per cent in Scotland. By the last General Election, however, they were polling 15 per cent. To find a figure close to that, one has to go back to 1865. In the last Holyrood elections they were down five MSPs to 15.

The cheery news for Ms Davidson is that the party has a charismatic new leader in her good self. Moreover, she is facing a Scottish Labour party that is about as much use as a brick in a swimming competition. Her other opponents have either been around for a long time with all the problems that longevity brings (scandal, for one), or are so inconsequential as to be not worth bothering about (sorry Liberal Democrats). So why isn’t Ms Davidson zooming ahead in her shiny new Skoda of a party?

Her problem, as ever, is history. In theory it should not be, but it is. Ms Davidson was 12 when Mrs Thatcher left Downing Street. That era, and the pain visited on Scotland, should be a distant memory, if a memory at all to her generation and the ones that came after. Yet mention Bathgate, Linwood, Methil and Irvine to a 12-year-old Scot today and they will sing the lines from The Proclaimers song. Slightly older youngsters will tell you why the lines are there. They know all this because the history of the Tories in Scotland is in with the bricks, and will require a Red Road flats demolition job if it is to disappear.

Ms Davidson will have a hard time achieving that, not least because the SNP and Labour have slapped a preservation order on memories of Tory misrule over Scotland. Well, wouldn’t you? Even if the Scottish Tory leader could somehow get her hands on one of those Men in Black neuralyzers and go round every voting age adult wiping out memories of the last 30 years, she would not be free of the past. For every day, in almost every way, her colleagues at Westminster remind Scots of Tory administrations gone by. Ms Davidson might be her own politician, the Scottish Tories might be stuffed with top blokes and notable women, but only a train ride away, and on your television screens and in your newspapers every day, are the pro-austerity, benefits-cutting, tuition fees-imposing Conservatives of old.

Try as Ms Davidson might to convince voters her party has changed, there is a strict limit to how much she can distance herself from her own head office in London. She can be a little bit naughty in opposing tax credit cuts, but she cannot rubbish George Osborne’s programme entirely, even if she would want to. She can speak about protecting the vulnerable, but she cannot get rid of benefit sanctions. And she can talk all she likes about standing up for Scotland, but that bus has already left with the SNP at the wheel. Keep turning if you want to, Ms Davidson, but your party has a long way to go yet.