Ruth Davidson

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.

Early life and career 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. 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. 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,

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. After the election she was appointed by Goldie as the Conservative spokesperson for Culture, Europe and External Relations. 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. Academic Alexander Smith described Davidson as ideologically aligned with the party's centrists while Fraser was associated with the party's right. She was also supported by David Mundell, the sole Conservative MP in Scotland. 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".

Early leadership 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. David Torrance wrote that after a year in office Davidson "had little to show in terms of policy development, strategic direction or opinion polls". 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. Ian Leslie argues that the referendum gave Davidson an opportunity to become a major figure in Scottish politics. He wrote that she was an effective campaigner able to make a compelling case even for aspects of UK policy which were not popular in Scotland, such as Trident. thumb Davidson speaking at the 2014 Conservative Party conferenceWhen Alex Salmond resigned as First Minister of Scotland, Davidson nominated herself to succeed him. She knew that the SNP's majority virtually assured that Salmond's successor as SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, would become First Minister. Nevertheless, she felt the need to offer "an alternative vision of Scotland". Davidson received 15 votes to Sturgeon's 66. David Torrance argues that she began a strategy of attempting to appeal to "No" voters on the basis of their vote. Davidson called Sturgeon a referendum "denier" and implied that she wanted another vote in the near future. Police Scotland stated, in reference to the report, that no evidence of criminality was found, and consequently there was no charge to answer.

2016 EU referendum and aftermath Before the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum held on 23 June 2016, she campaigned against British withdrawal from the European Union. On 21 June 2016, she participated in the BBC's Wembley Arena Debate, as a panellist for the "Remain" campaign with Frances O'Grady and Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. Their opponents were former Mayor of London and Conservative MP Boris Johnson, Labour MP Gisela Stuart and Conservative MP Andrea Leadsom, who argued on behalf of the "Leave" campaign as part of a cross-party debate. She was critical of other Conservatives supporting Leave.

The referendum saw 52% of British voters decide to leave the European Union, while 62% of the Scottish electorate who cast their vote backed remaining in the EU. Years later Davidson reflected: "Turns out we were 4% not good enough – but for such things the world turns – and I'll never quite forgive myself for not getting that 4%." Following the announcement of the result, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon suggested the constitutional change it would bring about justified the need for a second referendum on Scottish independence, but Davidson said this would not be the answer to concerns raised by the prospect of leaving the European Union: "The 1.6 million votes cast in this referendum in favour of Remain do not wipe away the two million votes that were cast less than two years ago". She also called on the UK and Scottish Governments to work together and put "stability" first.

In the Conservative leadership contest triggered by the resignation of Prime Minister David Cameron, Davidson gave her backing to Home Secretary Theresa May to succeed him as Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister, describing May as a "proper grown up [who is] best placed to navigate the stormy waters ahead". Davidson was appointed to the Privy Council on 13 July 2016. At the 2016 Conservative Party Conference, Davidson warned her party that "immigrants should be made to feel welcome in the UK" and the "party should not lurch to the right in the wake of Labour's implosion". She argued that Britain should seek access to the European Single Market even if that meant accepting reciprocal freedom of movement.

Electoral gains in 2016 and 2017 Davidson meets Prince Charles, 2016In 2016 and 2017, Davidson had high approval ratings in Scotland with many voters seeing her as an unusual kind of Conservative. Political commentator Stephen Bush argued that the aftermath of the Scottish independence referendum gave Davidson an opportunity to position herself and her party as the "loudest defender of the Union". This, he wrote, was a position with significant appeal among a section of "No" supporting Labour and Liberal Democrat voters at a time when Scottish Labour were focused on minimising their losses of 'Yes' supporters to the SNP. Bush was of the view that this contributed to Conservative electoral gains in Scotland over the next few years.

Davidson led the Scottish Conservatives into the 2016 Scottish Parliament election, where the party doubled its number of Scottish Parliament seats to 31, replacing Labour as the second largest party at Holyrood behind the Scottish National Party. The election also saw Davidson, who had previously been a list MSP, win the constituency of Edinburgh Central from the SNP with 10,399 votes. Reacting to the result Davidson said, "I am under no illusion that everybody who voted for me in that seat is a true-blue, dyed-in-the wool Tory, and neither are they in places up and down Scotland. They are people who want us to do a very specific job, and that it is to hold the SNP to account." Following the success of the Scottish Conservatives at the 2016 Scottish election, in which the party doubled its number of MSPs, a Guardian article noted that "some in Westminster see her as a potential future leader, who could broaden the party's appeal and help tackle perceptions it is on the side of the privileged". However, Davidson dismissed the suggestion in an interview with The House magazine, describing the role of Prime Minister as "the loneliest job in the world".

At the 2017 local elections, the Scottish Conservatives achieved their best results since devolution, gaining 164 seats including some surprise successes in working-class neighbourhoods such as Calton in Glasgow's East End and Ferguslie Park in Paisley (the UK's most deprived ward). The 2017 general election saw the Conservatives win 13 seats in Scotland, its best result since 1983. In an election which was not seen as going as well for the Conservatives elsewhere commentators linked their successes in Scotland to Ruth Davidson personally. The British General Election of 2017 notes that 'Had the [Conservative] party increased its vote share [in Scotland] only by the same amount as it did in England and Wales, it would have had just two Scottish seats rather than 13.' Though, while Davidson was popular and fought a distinct campaign from May she wasn't the only factor influencing the result. A figure Davidson had criticised and mocked in previous years.

Later career

Return to backbenches and acting leadership

After her resignation, Davidson criticised Boris Johnson for suspending 21 Conservative MPs in September 2019 and said he was doing so to make sure that the moderates in his cabinet were replaced by "more compliant Conservatives". She also praised Amber Rudd's decision to leave the cabinet over the "act of political vandalism".

In October 2019, Davidson accepted a public relations role for lobbying firm Tulchan Communications while retaining her job as an MSP. Her employment drew into question potential conflicts of interest and the size of her salary, £50,000 for 25 days' work, in addition to her £63,000-a-year MSP's salary. A week later, she changed her mind after meeting with parliamentary officials, although she insisted no conflict would have emerged had she still taken up the role. She implied in a December 2019 interview that she might want to become UK Conservative leader in years to come, when her son was older. Prior to the 2019 general election Davidson said that she would swim naked in Loch Ness if the Scottish National Party won 50 seats, but avoided the ordeal as the SNP won only 48.

In July 2020, when support for Scottish Independence and the SNP was at a high in the polls, Davidson's successor Jackson Carlaw resigned. Davidson then lobbied for the leadership bid of Douglas Ross. Later that month, it was announced she would be given a life peerage. She agreed to serve as Leader of the Conservative Party in the Scottish Parliament until the 2021 Scottish Parliament election, while Ross was yet to be elected to the Scottish Parliament. Ross was announced as leader five days later after running unopposed. In the 2021 Scottish Parliament election, Davidson featured heavily on her party's campaign literature, reportedly because she remained popular with "floating unionist voters".

House of Lords In July 2021, Davidson entered the House of Lords as Baroness Davidson of Lundin Links, of Lundin Links in the County of Fife. She made her maiden speech on 22 October 2021 when she supported Baroness Meacher's Assisted Dying Bill. In other statements, she has criticised reductions of troop numbers in the British Army and a UK government scheme to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda. She claimed £24,521 in expenses and made six contributions to debates in her first year as a member.

Davidson presented Football's Gambling Addiction, a Channel 4 documentary released in June 2021 about the relationship between football and the gambling industry. In January 2022, it was announced that she would be presenting a weekly programme on Times Radio. She said that she was "very excited about combining my two great loves: politics and live broadcasting". In July 2023, she was appointed a non-executive director on the board of the Scottish Rugby Union.

In July 2024, Davidson, alongside the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, was a panelist for the Sky News coverage of the general election which Labour won. She has also appeared regularly on Beth Rigby's podcast Electoral Dysfunction, alongside Jess Phillips and Harriet Harman. In January 2026, Davidson alongside Andy Street, David Gauke and Amber Rudd launched a movement called Prosper UK, aiming to bring the Conservative party back to the centre right.

Public image

Ruth Davidson was often described in reporting as an unusual type of Conservative. Her lower-middle class upbringing was frequently referenced in media coverage as an outlier in a party whose politicians were often perceived to be from privileged backgrounds. Davidson had previous experience dealing with the media from her broadcasting career and various election campaigns allowed her to improve her skills. David Patrick argued that Davidson was effective in using photo opportunities, magazine profiles and less serious sections of the news media to cultivate her image. He also suggested her unionist message aligned with the views of most Scottish papers, which contributed to her receiving a positive response in the press. Various commentators argued that Ruth Davidson's appeal had roots in the fact that she was a clearly Scottish figure arguing against Scottish independence, something a majority had voted against in the 2014 referendum. David Patrick wrote that she was "in many ways defined by her sexuality in her early years as leader, particularly in the period before she became so closely associated with opposition to another independence referendum", noting that her sexuality received interest from early on in the gay press. liberal or the 'centre ground'. Following Jeremy Corbyn's second internal leadership victory in 2016, she wrote an opinion piece for the Times promising to build a "moderate Scottish Conservative party that appeals to the same people who supported Brown and Blair". A 2014 Financial Times report called Davidson an "enthusiastic advocate of small government". Ian Leslie wrote in a 2016 profile of Davidson that her ideals are "profoundly conservative" arguing that she is a "British patriot, a churchgoer, a passionate supporter of the armed forces, an advocate for marriage, a believer in self-reliance". Although Leslie also stated that she is someone who entered politics as a career rather than out of ideological conviction. He notes that she only became formally involved in adulthood and struggled to name politicians she regarded as role models outside of fictional literature. He continued that: She also said that Conservatives had been wrong in their former opposition to the creation of the Scottish Parliament. In June 2014, she endorsed greater devolution arguing that it was reflective of public opinion, that the Scottish parliament being more accountable for what it spent was in line with conservative principles and that it would make it easier for her party to make an appeal based on tax cutting at Scottish Parliament elections. She argued in 2017 that more devolution of powers within Scotland to local government could help promote economic growth. In 2018, Ruth Davidson said in an interview that she would support a legal challenge in the Supreme Court on the basis of the Scottish Parliament voting to protect what it argued were its existing powers over Brexit. She asserted that the importance of legal action was to test the complex situation in the court.

Foreign affairs In 2018, she criticised the behaviour of the charity workers in question following revelations that some employers of Oxfam in Haiti had been using prostitutes. She praised the assistance provided by foreign aid in general citing the examples of child immunisation programmes, landmine clearance and female education. In 2020, she criticised Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak's decision to decrease the amount the UK promised to spend on foreign aid from 0.7% to 0.5% of national income.

After King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia died in January 2015, the UK government decided to hang British flags at half-mast as a sign of mourning. In response, Davidson tweeted: "Flying flags at half-mast on government buildings for the death of a Saudi king is a steaming pile of nonsense. That is all." This tweet was in the context of recent outrage caused by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia publicly beheading a woman and sentencing a blogger to 1,000 lashes. Following the Taliban's reconquest of Afghanistan in 2021, Davidson wrote an opinion piece with former Liberal Democrat leader Menzies Campbell advocating the UK give foreign aid to HALO, a British charity they are both associated with, which helps to clear landmines in Afghanistan.

Public services In her leadership campaign, Davidson expressed support for state-funded Roman Catholic schooling in Scotland, and a belief that the Church of Scotland should open its own faith schools as well. In 2017, she argued in a speech to the Scottish Conservative conference that the education system in Scotland was not functioning effectively. She criticised the Curriculum for Excellence arguing that it had made "a generation of teachers, parents and pupils utterly confused about what is going on". In a speech in the same context in 2019 she argued that young people should be required to remain in some form of education or training up until the age of 18.

In 2011, she expressed support for judges being given the ability to effectively sentence perpetrators of "the most heinous, cruel and vile" crimes with a life sentence, with the intent that they are never released. In 2018, she wrote an opinion piece arguing that early release was being used too often in the Scottish justice system and that the victims of crimes should be allowed to attend parole board hearings.

In 2018, she wrote an opinion piece expressing support for the NHS saying that it had saved her life following a childhood accident. She criticised the fact that the Scottish NHS had not had its funding increased by as much as its English counterpart since 2010.

Social issues A 2019 BBC News profile commented that "In the past, Ms Davidson has referred to LGBTI rights as one thing she cares about more than her party." Davidson supported same-sex marriage in a debate on legalising the practise in Scotland stating that "Presiding Officer, from childhood, you have known without even thinking that if you found someone you loved and who loved you in return, you would have the right to marry them... I want that right to extend to not just me but the thousands of people across Scotland who are told that the law says no and that they cannot marry the love of their life."

At a campaign event for the 2022 local elections, she criticised what she saw as incendiary language in the debate around trans rights saying that "gotcha questions about who is a woman, who is a man, I'm not sure that helps". She expressed the view that the rights of women and trans people "do not have to be in conflict" elaborating that "let’s see how we can make things better and easier for people in the trans community who, as a minority, are vulnerable, are more open to attack, are more likely to be victims of crime, but while also seeking reassurances for rights for women that have been hard won over decades."

Davidson supports legalising assisted dying. She voted against legalising the practice in Scotland in 2015, a decision which she said several years later was motivated by "cowardice". She said that a change in her views had been motivated by seeing the suffering caused to relatives by dementia and by having some of her religious beliefs around the "creation of life" challenged by her use of IVF.

Personal life On 18 February 2015, Davidson appeared in a party election broadcast in which she was seen with her same-sex partner Jen Wilson, a 33-year-old Irish woman from County Wexford. Davidson announced her engagement to Wilson in May 2016, after proposing to her on holiday in Paris. On 26 April 2018 Davidson announced that she had become pregnant after receiving IVF treatment, and that she and Wilson were "excited" to be expecting their first child. On 26 October, Davidson gave birth to a boy at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. She lives in North Berwick, East Lothian.

In a 2015 interview with BBC Radio Scotland, Davidson spoke about struggling with her sexuality: "I struggled with it for a number of years actually before I would admit it to myself, never mind to anybody else. But there comes a point at which you make a decision and that decision is either that you're going to live a lie for the rest of your life, or you're going to trust yourself, and that's what I had to do." In her memoirs, published in 2018 and serialised by The Sunday Times Magazine, Davidson writes of struggling with mental health issues as a teenager, something that she says was triggered by the suicide of a boy in her village. She has said that these struggles almost dissuaded her from running for leadership.

Davidson is a member of the Church of Scotland and counts dog walking, hillwalking and kickboxing as her hobbies. She supports Scottish football team Dunfermline Athletic. On 23 October 2015, Davidson became the first female Scottish politician to appear as a panellist on the BBC One satirical news quiz Have I Got News for You. Between 2017 and 2025, Davidson served as the Honorary Colonel of 32nd Signal Regiment. Davidson was included in Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2018.