Party leader interviews: Ruth Davidson

RUTH Davidson has come a long way fast.

In just three and a half years leading the Scottish Conservatives, she has gone from rookie MSP to David Cameron's right hand in the north, and become a party poster girl for her unapologetic 'Hell yes I'm a Tory' performances in recent TV debates.

"It's not just an inner confidence in me, it's an inner confidence in the whole party," she says, grabbing a break between campaign stops yesterday.

"We have a spring in our step. When I took over we apologised too much. We talked to an ever-dwindling band of people, we didn't go out and evangelise for what we believe in. We started every conversation with 'I'm sorry I'm a Tory but... rather than saying 'We believe in X and if you believe in X you're a Tory too."

The referendum has been crucial to the change of mood.

As the arch unionists in Better Together, the party was obviously relieved at the result - never having seen the UK "threatened" before, Davidson says even she was surprised by how strongly she came to feel about it - but the Tories were also excited by it.

After years of slumber, they felt their latent support had finally been stirred to life by the prospect of independence. It was as if a spell was broken. Instead of looking forward to another listless election in Scotland, the party had itself a game changer.

The Conservative Friends of the Union campaign raised hundreds of thousands of pounds and added 80,000 names to the Tory database of would-be voters.

The referendum also brought in 2000 new activists eager to pound streets and take part in what Davidson calls Operation Doorstep, where the basic pitch is vote Tory to keep the economy motoring and to honour the result of the referendum.

She says her campaign machine is in better shape than at any time since 1992.

After the hubris of 2010, when the Tories bigged up their chances in 11 Scots seats then won just one, Davidson's modest target is at least one more Tory MP and for the party to come third in the polls, ahead of the LibDems in vote share.

In practice, it means holding the sole Tory seat won last time - David Mundell's Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale - and gaining another from the LibDems, probably Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk or West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine.

It sounds like a plan, but isn't there a snag? You're Tories and Scotland hates Tories.

"It might be what you like to write and your readers like to read, but it's not reflected in the rest of the country. One in six people voted for us last time out. I want to see that get closer to one on five. You don't reverse 20 years of stagnation and decline in one electoral cycle. I'm three and a half years into a 10-year project to get the Tory party back up on its feet in Scotland and I think we are making advances towards that."

Is Scotland angrier and more divided since the referendum?

"The echoes of the referendum are still beating loud and long," she says reflectively.

"I had hoped.. the country would come back together again and move forward.

"My worry is that if these echoes last loud and long into the future we somehow become... not quite like Northern Ireland, but somewhere closer to it, where your definition is first and foremost about which side of a binary divide you're on.

"I don't ever want to get to the stage where we're sort of Balkanised to an extent, where people will only listen to your ideas if they first work out which side of the constitutional debate you'd fallen on. That does us all a disservice."

But isn't David Cameron's anti-SNP rhetoric stoking up such divisions?

"I absolutely reject that," she says, adding it's perfectly fair to ask why Nicola Sturgeon would be so keen to pal up with Labour unless she saw it as a means to a Yes vote.

Is Sturgeon, as the Tory tabloids put it, the most dangerous woman in Britain?

"No," she laughs. "I think Nicola is an incredibly accomplished woman. She's in her prime at the moment. She is very capable. She's smart. I think she plays with a much straighter bat than her predecessor. I just happen to think she's wrong about almost everything she stands for."

So why would a person with all these positive qualities take the country to hell in a handcart? Because she has been fighting all her life for independence, she says.

"The SNP is for independence. Everything else falls away after that. That for them is the goal, irrespective of whether there are more or less opportunities in Scotland, or people are better or worse off, or we're able to invest more or less in public services.

"I believe Scotland has contributed a huge amount to the United Kingdom. Not only would the United Kingdom be diminished if we left but we would be diminished for leaving. We have a fundamental disagreement on that."

Cameron talks as if the SNP are beyond the pale when it comes to getting a say in how the UK is run. Do you think some parties should be excluded from government?

"No, I'm a democrat," she says, explaining it's simply the Tories' choice not to ally with nationalist parties "of any hue", whether that's SNP, Plaid, Sinn Fein or the SDLP.

"It's entirely up to any political party to make those same choices."

The SNP say their MPs would vote to block another Tory-led government, even if Cameron had more MPs than Ed Miliband, giving Labour the chance to govern.

There's been comment recently about whether such a Miliband government would have legitimacy or be fatally undermined by being an alliance of the losers.

Would it have legitimacy? Davidson says she would worry about the SNP cynically stirring up English resentment in such a scenario in order to advance independence, but in a departure from the Cameron script admits it would indeed be legitimate.

"If any parties are able to form a stable government and take that to the Queen and be asked to form a government, then that is the government of the United Kingdom.

"I mean, our constitution is pretty straight on that."

But it's not all refreshingly straight talk.

Ask about foodbanks and Tory plans to cut £12bn from welfare, and Davidson, who says she doesn't know when she last visited a foodbank, can't bear to admit the bleeding obvious.

Is the huge rise in foodbank use connected to Conservative welfare policy?

"When there's a massive recession... people on the lowest incomes struggle the most-"

But I thought you'd fixed the economy? "Well that's exactly what we're trying to do."

But you can't blame a hangover from the recession and also claim credit for fixing the economy? "You can't blame Coalition policies for the fact Norway has more foodbanks than Scotland, Germany has more foodbanks than the UK, France has twice the UK-"

Would the £12bn of welfare cuts increase or decrease the use of foodbanks?

"When there are delays in welfare benefits that has an effect. We need to look at that seriously- "

Foodbank use up or down? "The issue we have is that, you know, there are sort of funds available for people who are struggling, the Scottish welfare fund, for example, wasn't used and if people don't know about it they have to know about it."

Up or down? "The purpose of the reforms of welfare is to get more people into work.... In the longer term we will see a reduction in foodbank use."

But in the short term there would be a rise surely? "Don't put words in my mouth."

If you take money away from people who have very little then surely that's going to increase the use of foodbanks? "We have helped more people into work, we want to have full employment.. raising wages at the lower end, taking people on low incomes out of taxation. We believe that in the long term this will decrease foodbank use."

Of course, in the long run, as John Maynard Keynes used to say, we are all dead.

After May 7 we'll see if the Scottish Tories are too.