A toast to the new Scottish dawn

‘Stands Scotland where it did?’ As the bottles circulated, we were able to answer Macduff’s question in much more optimistic terms than would have seemed possible even a month earlier, thanks to Ruth Davidson, the Malcolm Canmore of our age. It is extraordinary. Scottish Tories spent almost 20 years on the fringes of politics, marginalised and derided. During that black period, it was clear no other force in Scotland could be relied on to defend the Union. After the Nats’ triumph in 2015, an unpleasant version of Rousseau’s general will seem to have triumphed with it. If you did not support the SNP, you were not a proper Scot. If you were actually a Tory, you were a disgrace to Scotland. This was the darkest hour, with no apparent prospect of dawn.

The dawn did come, from a most improbable direction. Until recently, imagine if anyone had said that Scottish Toryism would be revived and the Union would find a new paladin: a 38-year-old lesbian who grew up on a council estate.