Ruth Davidson’s Blue-collar Conservatism subtly rebukes David Cameron

Today’s Scottish Conservative conference in Edinburgh proved unexpectedly interesting. No, really. Or, rather, yes, really. Or whatever. David Cameron spoke, you see, and so did Ruth Davidson and they said very different things. For important Prime Ministerial timetabling reasons (ie, he needed to get back to London) Cameron spoke first and thus, unusually, served as the warm-up guy. Which merely helped emphasise the difference between what the Prime Minister said and what the Scottish Tory leader had to say.

Some of this was a question of substance.Cameron declared that the national question is “settled” whereas Davidson warned that “This isn’t over and it hasn’t gone away”. Only one of them can be right and it’s not the Prime Minister. The thing is, you see, that English Tories evidently want the SNP to take as many Labour seats in Scotland as possible. By contrast, the Scottish party increasingly thinks the SNP, not Labour, are the biggest enemy they face.