Tacitus argued that, after 68, ‘the secret of imperial rule was revealed: an emperor could be made somewhere other than Rome’. It has taken metropolitan observers some time to wake up to the fact the same is true in Britain today. A star can be born far from London.
The difference, however, is that not all roads lead to Westminster. It takes time for change to work its way through the system so perhaps it is not surprising that it is only now that we are seeing the fruits of devolution. In their different – very different – ways Nicola Sturgeon and Ruth Davidson have each demonstrated that devolution works. It has, at least in Scotland, established an alternative to Westminster. Careers and reputations can be made and won 400 miles from the House of Commons. That’s a good thing and an overdue thing too.
But that’s also why all those people who watched Ruth Davidson set about Boris Johnson with a crowbar during last night’s BBC debate and found themselves thinking Why can’t we (ie, you) have more of her here (ie, there)? are going to be disappointed.
There are obvious and compelling practical objections to this idea but, in the end, these are less important than other reasons that should persuade even wishful-thinkers that this isn’t just something that can’t happen but something that shouldn’t happen.
Nevertheless, let us begin with the practical concerns. First, there is no vacancy and, if Remain prevails on Thursday, won’t be one for some time yet. Second, the next Tory leader will be chosen, in the first instance, by MPs and then by a virulently eurosceptic party membership. To become leader, Ms Davidson would need to find a seat in the Commons some time before David Cameron stands down. That evidently cannot happen if Leave wins tomorrow and Cameron is defenestrated by the end of the summer. Nor, for reasons we will come to, will Davidson head south in search of a safe seat and a convenient by-election at any point in this parliament.
Even if she did and even if, as seems most unlikely, Tory MPs voted someone who had been an MP for just a few weeks or months, into the final two, I am not sure the party membership would necessarily embrace a candidate who is wholeheartedly pro-european. A candidate, moreover, who rose to prominence(as far as they are concerned) by head-butting Boris Johnson and then setting about his legs with a crowbar (figuratively speaking, of course).
It is also the case, though some people seem to have forgotten this, that Davidson already has a job and not a small one either. The Scottish parliament is no longer a diddy institution and leading the Scottish Tories back from the brink of extinction is neither a trivial matter nor a journey that is even half-completed. It is a damn sight more important job than most cabinet posts.
Because it’s not just about resuscitating the Scottish Tories, either. Davidson, as leader of the largest opposition party at Holyrood, is tasked with leading Scottish Unionism and that too is a larger, more important, job than almost anything available at Westminster. Reviving Unionism is a ten year project too. That’s about more than just maintaining its current, though still provisional, numerical supremacy over nationalism but, just as importantly, about rethinking what Unionism means in 2016 and beyond.
That requires rearmament in a moral and intellectual sense as well as in narrow, purely political, terms. The SNP haven’t gone away, you know, and beating the nationalists – or even just limiting their advantage – is a greater, more vital, cause than beating Labour. Besides, other people in England should be able to take care of Corbyn’s Labour party without calling on Davidson. Keeping Britain alive is Davidson’s great cause. All else pales beside that. And that won’t change anytime soon.
Think, too, of the message that would be sent were Davidson to scuttle south in search of personal advancement. It would, I fear, suggest there was something second-rate and irredeemably provincial about Scotland. You can’t rise to prominence by fighting the SNP and then disappear before the battle’s even half-finished. One lesson to be gleaned from recent years is that Unionist talent needs to stay in Scotland. (If this means Davidson is in one sense trapped by her own success then so be it. The very qualities that make her attractive to southern Tories are the qualities that require her to stay in Scotland.)
That would be good for Britain as well, just as greater devolution of responsibility to the great English cities should be good for the future of our politics. We have already seen how being Mayor of London establishes a person as a figure of some credible weight on the national stage; being mayor of Manchester or Birmingham should, in time, do something similar. Diffusing power away from Westminster should be thought a feature, not a bug. There must be alternative roads to political prominence; not everything has to pass through the lobby at the Palace of Westminster.
In any case, Scotland is Ruth Davidson’s home and she likes it here. Campaigns and television debates see her at her best but, as she would I think admit herself, there is more to the job than just campaigning and debating. Those other elements remain a work in progress.
Not that Davidson is alone. The Tory party, post-Cameron, will have to change. It will have to be a blue-collar party not a white-tie party. That means its future, I think, depends upon the likes of Stephen Crabb, Robert Halfon and Sajid Javid more than it does on Boris and his chums. Davidson will have her part to play in this, of course, but it will be, I think, as a supporting act, not the main attraction. (There is also the minor but still ticklish difficulty that she doesn’t want to be the main attraction.)
Last night Ladbrokes reported a flurry of money backing Davidson’s claims to be the next Tory leader. If ever there was a sucker’s bet, this is it. I’ll happily offer double the bookmakers’ odds to anyone who wants a piece of this action.
Sorry English Tories, but you’ll have to find your own champion.
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