Politics and parenthood: Exclusive interview with Ruth Davidson

Scottish Conservative leader, Ruth Davidson, went on maternity leave last October, leaving her deputy, Jackson Carlaw, in charge with the reassuring words that all would be quiet on the political front.

Six months later, Carlaw, as interim leader, has had to face Nicola Sturgeon at FMQs, had to defend an increasingly chaotic Brexit process, publicly support a Tory government in meltdown, answer questions over allegations of inappropriate behaviour of a prominent Scottish Tory MP, applaud a tarnished prime minister forced to announce her departure and stand by a Brexit still to be delivered.

On top of that, and on the eve of Davidson’s return, a poll has seen the Scottish Labour Party under Richard Leonard overtake the Tories, predicts annihilation for Davidson’s party in the European elections later this month, and shows support for independence has risen to an all-time high. And with the First Minister now planning for a second independence referendum, politics has been anything but quiet in her absence.

With her inimitable optimism, Davidson ignores all of that and says she returns to frontline politics with things pretty much as they were six months ago.

“In a sense, things have changed but also, in a sense, Nicola’s still talking about a second indyref, and Brexit still hasn’t happened yet, so the two big things are almost exactly where they were when I left them.”

For Davidson herself, everything has changed. The birth of Finn in October after just one round of IVF has changed her priorities. She looks glowing, but as she describes the “bone-crushing” effects of sleep-deprivation, I tell her that in her absence, Carlaw told me in an interview that the maternity break would mean that she was getting her energy back and would come back to lead the party refreshed and raring to go. Davidson explodes in her characteristic guffaw.

“Ha, it’s a long time since he had his kids,” she laughs. “Let’s just say it’s a different type of tired you get when you’ve got a young baby, so I am definitely coming back raring to go on the work side. And although Finn is getting better at sleeping, there will be days when I will have had a night that’s been broken and that might not be the best preparation for work. But do you know what? Thousands of women across Scotland manage to do this every year, so it’s just a case of buckle up and get on with it.”

This is typical of Davidson’s ‘can do’ approach. Whatever else she may be, she is most definitely a force of nature and where she sees an obstacle, she finds a way of getting around it.

Davidson had only been a member of the Conservative Party for three years when she was elected in 2011, having joined up on the same day that she handed in her application for redundancy at the BBC where she worked as a radio journalist.

And just days after being elected as a Tory list MSP for Glasgow, her party leader, Annabel Goldie, announced she was stepping down and although Davidson’s potential as a future leader had been recognised by commentators, many were surprised when she threw her hat in the ring as a contender so early in her political career and then won.

Since then, she has proved her mettle by throwing her all at: two referendums, a Scottish Parliament election in which she was re-elected but this time for the constituency seat of Edinburgh Central, a general election, a snap election and various local elections.

By any measure, Davidson has resurrected her party from being an electoral irrelevance in Scotland. From having one solitary Scottish MP at Westminster for 20 years, she now has 13. She has increased the number of MSPs from 15 to 31, replaced Labour as the main opposition at Holyrood and more than doubled the number of Tory councillors. All branded as ‘Ruth Davidson’s Scottish Conservatives’.

Following her national exposure as a passionate campaigner for a Remain vote, when she took on Boris Johnson in the live broadcast debate from the SSE Arena at Wembley during the EU referendum and accused him of peddling lies, it’s no exaggeration to say that she became regarded as something of a national treasure.

With her book Yes She Can, published last year in a storm of publicity, with regular appearances on national television, a slot at last year’s Davos conference, a four-page spread in glossy fashion magazine Vogue, and the winner of a special charity edition of Channel 4’s Great British Bake Off, she has reached celebrity status.

Vogue magazine named her as one of the 25 most influential women in Britain celebrated for how they are redefining the way we live.

She has been frequently tipped as a potential prime minister – a suggestion she rejects on the basis that it would not be good for her mental health – but as she returns, she does have her ambitions firmly set on becoming Scotland’s next first minister.

And there is no question that as the UK’s first political leader to give birth while in office, never mind the first gay political leader to get pregnant, she is fully aware of her responsibilities as a role model for working mothers.

“I’m trying to be as open as possible about the way in which we [Davidson and her fiancée, Jen,] are doing it, while acknowledging that different solutions work for different families. You know what was lovely was at the birth, the New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, sent me a tweet to say, you know, ‘well done and if you need any tips’ type thing. She chose to take six weeks [off] before she was back at her desk; now I’ve chosen to take six months, and that’s quite a big difference, but I think it’s important to be able to show people what their choices are, that there are different ways of doing things.

“I think it would be unrealistic to expect every woman in Scotland to be back at their work within six weeks and it was a choice I didn’t want to make for my child. But there are others for whom that is the choice that they do want to make and that is perfectly valid. I do think that it is quite important to be able to explain, this is how we’re doing it, but that we totally get that others do it differently.

“Everybody tells you loads of things when you are pregnant and there is something that’s sort of sweet and also sort of scary about it when everybody wants to come up and tell you these, like, disastrous, horrendous, biological birthing stories that they have in graphic detail and then they touch you on the forearm and say, ‘it’s all worth it, though’ and then walk off.

“I think the thing is, it’s both harder than people tell you it’s going to be but it’s also better than they tell you it’s going to be, and it’s quite hard to articulate what that feels like, other than to say it is so worth it.”

I ask her how she found the gear shift from FMQs to being a new mum, particularly since Finn was born two weeks early by caesarean section because of concerns about his size – he was over 10lbs.

“It was difficult at first because I had him very, very quickly after the October recess started, so I had him within a couple of days of officially going off on mat leave. It meant I didn’t have a big transition in terms of leaving work and having him. There was quite a lot going on, Brexit-wise, at the time down south, so the first few weeks, I don’t think I managed the gearshift very well at all, if I am honest.

“I had also, probably quite stupidly, told my publishers that I would add an extra chapter to my book, which had to be handed in within a couple of months of him being born. So it turns out you can type on a laptop one-handed while breastfeeding with the other, you know, on the other side, it is possible. I wouldn’t recommend it, but it can be done.

“I think the first few weeks, I maybe did put a bit too much pressure on myself to do everything and then I sort of realised that my primary, in fact, the only rule for this period, is actually making sure that the first, last and always is Finn.

“Weirdly, the longer I was away, the less involved I was in the day-to-day running, party-wise. I still had weekly phone-call catch-ups with Jackson, and I still spoke to David Mundell and cabinet colleagues down south, as and when I needed to, but we knew before I went off that I’m a dreadful meddler so that we were going to make Jackson the interim leader, rather than have him be the deputy with some decisions still taken by me, because it wouldn’t have worked. He had to have the authority, not just in terms of carrying out the parliamentary role but also the party role. I think people that aren’t involved in politics maybe don’t understand how much of your time is taken up with party management and in dealing with the executive of our party and the decision-making that you’ve got to do. There needed to be absolutely no confusion about who is at the top of that tree, and it was Jackson for the period that I was away, and I was very comfortable with that. I actually think he did a cracking job. He did a really good job.

“And to be fair, when I said it would be quiet, it was slightly tongue in cheek. In my defence, when I became pregnant in the February of last year, Finn wasn’t due until the November, Brexit was supposed to be done by September, in time for the October conference, so the plan, as much as there is with these things, had been to see Brexit through and then go off.

“So when I originally spoke to Jackson, and that was 12 weeks before the public announcement about me being pregnant because I brought him into the tent just to make sure we were all on the same page, it was looking as if it might have been a quieter period. It just didn’t work out that way, but in politics, a week is a long time.”

Politically, Davidson returns at a painful time for her party with Brexit still unresolved, pressure on the PM to quit, a People’s Vote in the ether and the SNP planning for a second independence referendum.

“This will come as no surprise to any of your readers, that I quite like wider unions. I tend to speak up for them, in Scotland being part of the UK and the UK being part of the EU. But I also believe that you do have to have losers’ consent and I think that’s where we’ve struggled in Scotland as well with the independence referendum.

“I don’t think rerunning the EU referendum is the right thing to do, nor do I think that having a no-deal Brexit is the right thing to do. I think it is trying to find a way in which people can make the compromises that need to be made.

“Personally, I don’t think there will be a second EU referendum, I genuinely don’t think that will happen. But if there was? Well, I know which way I would vote. I’ve always said that I would vote to remain, I did vote to remain, and I still would vote to remain. I genuinely would.”

I tell her that would put her at odds with the Secretary of State for Scotland, who has said he would vote Leave in the event of a rerun.

“Well, we’ve disagreed on things before and managed to rub along quite nicely,” she laughs. “But I genuinely believe there shouldn’t be one. I also believe that were there to be one, the Leave vote would be bigger. I think it would be bigger across the UK and I also think it would be bigger in Scotland.”

Regarding a second independence referendum, Davidson says she would recommend to the Prime Minister that it should not be allowed, but equally she doesn’t believe it could happen within the two-year timescale already set out by Nicola Sturgeon.

“Nicola herself said she wouldn’t have the right to call this unless a majority of Scots want it, and you know, the poll a couple of weekends ago had 21 per cent of people wanting a referendum in the timescale that she’s talking about. That is a minority. But you know, in terms of the heavy lifting that they’ve got to do to try and make that happen in the next two years, I can’t see it happening. I’m not complacent, though, and I’ll certainly be digging in to be making a counter-argument, but I’ll be speaking up for the clear majority of Scotland when I do.”

In terms of the European elections, she thinks that it is looking “more and more likely, by the day”, that they will take place and that unlike some of her high-profile colleagues in the party, she will be campaigning.

“I think that it will be a bit of a bubble election, it’s a free hit, if you like. So, I think that there’s going to be quite a lot of people that will get a kicking, but I’m not sure that it will necessarily tell us too much about the medium to long-term future of the country. But you know, that will be my seventh national election as leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party and I will endeavour to campaign in the way I have done in the six previous ones and in the two referenda I have led us through as well. I’m a political animal – you show me a poll I’ll throw myself at it.”

Brexit has, of course, always been more than just a political question for Davidson – her fiancée is from Ireland and the question about the Irish border has been personal.

“In terms of the Ireland dimension, the great tragedy of this is that so much of it has been spoken about it since the vote and so little was spoken about it before. That’s the tragedy.

“I did take part in a number of debates, both on television and hustings and round the country and, you know, the sense that this [Ireland] was front and centre in people’s minds is for the birds, because in anything I took part in, it wasn’t.”

I ask her if Finn will also have an Irish passport.

“If he wants one. It’s not something I would discount, absolutely not. I mean, he’s dual nationality so, you know, it’s entirely up to him. We’re living in Scotland, so he will have a British passport first because it’s easier but yeah [having an Irish one], that’s not a problem.” 

Davidson will fire the starting gun on her party’s push to get her into Bute House as First Minister in 2021 at conference in Aberdeen this weekend. And while the Prime Minister will be welcomed onto the stage, Boris Johnson, tipped as a front-runner in any future leadership contest, will not. I ask Davidson how she would feel having her party run by Johnson who could, potentially, be her biggest obstacle to winning a Holyrood election in two years time?

“I think I‘ve kind of already laid out the criteria under which I’ll be assessing the candidates, as and when they declare and, as you know, there isn’t a vacancy at the moment. If he declares, he will be assessed in the same way… Fair to say, it would be unlikely that I would be his campaign manager, though.”

Davidson sounds as gung-ho as ever but I ask her if having a baby has given her a different perspective?

“I think in terms of my own priorities, there have been times in my life, and in my leadership, where the job has come before loved ones. It has come before relationships and it has come before family and friends, events and birthdays and all of those other things, and now, I don’t think for one second it will come before Finn. He is absolutely number one, and I think that’s the big change, but that’s not about my capability to do the job, that’s about the way in which I manage my time.

“I’m being quite honest about the fact that I don’t know how this is going to work when I come back and there’s going to be an element of sucking and seeing, of trying some things and if that doesn’t work, trying something else. Seeing what we can make work for myself, for the party, for our family. But yeah, it’s clear that my son is my priority and I will also try and give 100 per cent to my work, too.

“It was a bit of a wrench this morning because there was a bit of a shift but in a sense, because of the change to the law on shared parental leave, which Jen and I are taking advantage of, the fact that for the next few weeks it’s Jen that’s going to be looking after him full time, slightly softens the blow. I think if I had been dropping him off at a nursery and he was crying and not wanting to go for the first time, I think that would have been different and I’ve still yet to experience that particular pain. And it will come. So, at the moment, it’s sort of a phased thing – we are sort of teasing the plaster off, not ripping it off.

“I am also fully aware that one of the things I am going to have to do is keep a spare suit and top in the office, in case I come out the house and I haven’t noticed that I’m covered in baby sick, or whatever, because that’s the current natural state of things. So, we will keep spares…”