Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

There are some of the rag reports in the link. But my favourite is this, showing that only actual terrorist Gerry Adams is less popular than George Osborne 

A unified theory of all the hated pro-Europeans, from Twitter:



Edit: One other thought is we've a lot of MPs now who weren't meant to be picked as candidates and haven't done great because there was a mad rush to choose a candidate in 2017 (Jared O'Mara and Fiona Onasanya spring to mind). My understanding is the parties are further along in choosing candidates, but not by a huge amount. So there's probably going to be another mad rush and more wildly inappropriate/incompetent MPs (as well as the very good ones)

[HisMajestyBOB]

Who's Ruth Davidson and why is she liked?

[garbon]

Who's Ruth Davidson and why is she liked?

She was the leader of the Scottish Conservatives. She was a gem.

[Sheilbh]

Former leader of the Scottish Tories. She was great.



Great piece on her resignation earlier this year (ahead of the decision).

Ruth Davidson's true enemies have always been in her own party
Alex Massie
28 August 2019

Ruth Davidson is on the brink of resigning as leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party. As I write this, party sources are making it clear there will be no statement on her future this evening. The absence of an immediate, dismissive, denial, gives greater credence to the suggestion that she will resign soon.

Not everything is about Brexit and this is one of these things that is not entirely about Brexit. For some weeks now Davidson's future has been the matter of some whispering at Holyrood. Very quiet whispers but whispers nonetheless. Earlier this summer one of her closer colleagues speculated to me about her future. Ruth wasn't at the top of her game, he said, and worse her heart didn't seem to be in it either. There was something afoot, something tired and even lacklustre about her. The Scottish Tories as a whole were becalmed and lacking in energy, ideas, and purpose. The idea Davidson might become first minister following the 2021 elections had been quietly dropped; the party was not behaving like a party that was getting ready to prepare for life in government. How much longer did Ruth want to remain as leader?

So if she resigns it is both a surprise and something less than a complete shock. Life changes and comes at you fast when you're a new mother. Juggling political leadership with motherhood is neither simple nor straightforward. Davidson, like many new mothers, has been reevaluating her priorities in recent months. And sometimes, some things have to give. That's not the only or even the dominant reason for her resignation but it is part of the reason.

Brexit, however, has hardly helped. It was not just that Davidson was a committed Remainer three years ago, it was that, like so many others, she expected that a vote to Leave would lead to a managed Brexit departure in which as many of the advantages of EU membership were retained as could reasonably be deemed possible. That, to put it mildly, is not how matters have transpired.

Time and time again Davidson has been forced to defend choices she thinks wholly regrettable and ultimately undesirable. There is a difference between accepting the referendum result and accepting every interpretation of it. There comes a point when doing so strips you of your political dignity; a point at which going along with it or being a good soldier becomes counter-productive. You can live like this, even in politics, but is it really worth doing so?

That Davidson and Boris Johnson have a terrible relationship is neither a secret nor quite the point. It doesn't help, but the fact Davidson considers the prime minister a **** is not, on its own, enough to force her out. But again, it hardly helps. And, to be clear, she doesn't think the prime minister a ****, she considers him a ****.

Even so, and despite all of the above, I had thought she would grin and bear it, sticking matters out until the 2021 Holyrood elections. As matters stand these are likely to be a proxy-referendum on the question of whether or not there ought to be another referendum on independence. A pro-Yes majority in the next Scottish parliament is likely to lead to a second plebiscite. Denying the SNP that victory was Davidson's chief remaining goal in politics. Her mission was, as she once put it, 'to bury this s**** for a decade'.  With the SNP stymied, although probably still in office in Edinburgh, she could have been forgiven for thinking she had done her bit and finished her shift. A decade as leader would be enough. 

Events next year may yet weaken the SNP. The nationalists' chances of victory in 2021 are imperilled by the fact they will by then have spent 14 years in power but, right now, Davidson's departure is a boon to the independence cause and a grievous blow to Unionism.

At its simplest, when you boil everything down to the real truth, without Ruth Davidson the Scottish Tories would most likely still be nowhere. When the party came second in the 2016 Holyrood election they did so on the back of a campaign that was, in essence, all about Ruth, the whole Ruth and nothing but the Ruth. Someone had to stand up to the SNP, and in the absence of anyone from Scottish Labour wishing to or capable of doing so, it fell to the Scottish Tories to be the watchers on the wall, the last true believers in and defenders of the Union.

And it worked. In 2011, the Scottish Tories won 276,000 votes and in 2016 they won more than half a million. That pattern was repeated in the 2017 general election in which the Tories captured a dozen new seats north of the border. In 2015, the year of the SNP tsunami, the Tories won 450,000 votes and in 2017 they took more than three quarters of a million.

Hence this irony: Ruth Davidson's success was made possible by her opponents and her demise has been brought about by her erstwhile friends and colleagues. She is a victim of both Brexit and the UK Conservative party's undeniable shift to the right. Poll after poll of English Tories has shown the weakness of Unionism south of the border. As a matter of sentiment it's not something that matters as much as once it did. Brexit is more important than Union in England whereas in Scotland, generally speaking, Union is more important than Brexit. Politics, as we all know, is the language of priorities.

That has left Scottish Unionists wondering if they're actually the last true believers in an old-time religion that's suddenly become deeply unfashionable. They worry, with increasing reason, that they have been abandoned by people they mistakenly considered their co-religionists. To put it another way, a UK Tory party that always thought about the interests of Unionism and considered them important would not have behaved in the way this UK Tory party has these past three years.

Inevitably, one of the next questions for the Scottish Tories is an old one. Should they remain part of the UK party or instead declare their independence and start afresh as a new and distinct party? This was the idea proposed by Murdo Fraser when he and Davidson fought for the leadership in 2011. Some 45 per cent of those Scottish Tories who voted in that election opted for Fraser's Dignitas proposal. Davidson, however, was always clear she thought this a counsel of despair. And besides, she argued, who would really be persuaded by this new party?

The argument has not disappeared, however, and as recently as a few weeks ago Davidson once again declared her opposition to it. A revivified UK needs more pan-UK institutions, not fewer. It wasn't something that would happen on her watch.

Now it seems as though her watch is ending and so the question will arise once again. There are plenty of Davidson's Holyrood colleagues who think the party's identity problem places a ceiling on the party's prospects in Scotland. The association with a UK party that, viewed from Scotland, seems increasingly barmy and evermore toxic has not helped. Davidson's successes have been in spite of her colleagues in government, not assisted by them.

How quickly a political star can fade, however. It is not so very long since people talked of Davidson as a bright new talent whose abilities were ill-served by being confined to the Scottish stage. A career at Westminster surely beckoned. A place in the Cabinet was certain. Perhaps she might even lead the party and be prime minister too.

Much of this was overly-excitable commentary and based on a hefty quantity of wishful thinking. It ignored the structural and personal hurdles that needed to be overcome to make any of it a reality. Even so, it was a mark of how a different kind of Tory could at least appear to offer something different. But then as more than one Scottish cynic suggested, no politician was ever half as good as the Ruth Davidson some people imagined they could see. Her unavailability only made her more desirable.

Davidson's Toryism was easily misunderstood in any case. Biography is not everything but even when it is something people concentrated on the wrong parts of Davidson's story. That she's a lesbian is much less important than her service in the army reserves and her belief in the god worshipped by the Church of Scotland. She is genuinely liberal on some matters – immigration being one – while being a traditional Tory on others, notably crime and punishment. That, though, was the point: she hinted at a new but genuine form of fusionism, marrying some of the preoccupations of the metropolitan classes with those of a more antique, rustic, brand of Conservatism.

Well, that song's over now too. After Ruth, who? There are no obvious or immediately compelling candidates. But even though that is palpably the case it is worth recalling that Ruth Davidson was not always Ruth Davidson either. Her first years as Tory leader were largely disappointing; it took her time to learn how to be a politician and time, too, to learn how to lead. She was in large part saved by Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon. As soon as the constitution became the real, this-is-for-keeps, dividing line in Scottish politics Davidson had a tune to sing and one, moreover, in which she believed wholeheartedly. Her successes – and they were real – were part of Alex Salmond's political legacy.

So perhaps another Ruth can arrive if and when the moment calls for him or her? Maybe so, but right now, here, this moment, that seems unlikely. Davidson possessed a rare ability to cut through the noise and reach voters who would not normally contemplate endorsing Tory candidates. Even many of those who could not stomach her party still had some respect, grudging or not, for Davidson. That's a precious and uncommon gift that is not easily replaced.

If she goes she has been done in by her friends in the south. A no-deal Brexit, which will give the SNP's political argument for independence a significant boost, is a concession too far. It is a fresh reminder too, if it were really needed, that the future of the United Kingdom as a going concern can be threatened in London as well as in Edinburgh or Glasgow. Scottish independence is not an issue likely to disappear soon and it turns out the United Kingdom can be lost, or at least jeopardised, on the playing fields of Eton.

Ultimately, Ruth Davidson could cope with the SNP. They were merely the opposition. Her enemies were to be found in what purported to be her own party and that, in the end, has proved too much.

[Admiral Yi]

Poor Michael Dukakis just chose the wrong seat to sit in. 

[Sheilbh]

Poor Michael Dukakis just chose the wrong seat to sit in. 

She seemed to have a great day out with a tank:



She was great for a photo op
And an amazing campaigner:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/jamieross/not-a-panda-in-sight

[mongers]

It's not a tank, but one of the numerous disarmed Abbot self-propelled guns (105mm) now in 'civilian use'.

[dps]

It's not a tank, but one of the numerous disarmed Abbot self-propelled guns (105mm) now in 'civilian use'.

I was pretty sure it wasn't an actual tank turret, but I was going to guess an up-gunned Saladin armored car turret.

[Valmy]

Poor Michael Dukakis just chose the wrong seat to sit in. 

You can definitely tell she knows her way around an AFV.

[HVC]

The bagpipe pick is my fav

[Richard Hakluyt]

I believe the tories currently hold 13 seats in Scotland; absent Ruth Davidson, and the tories' obvious lack of interest in Unionism, they are likely to lose most of these.

[Sheilbh]

Goodbye, then Ken Clarke

[mongers]

Goodbye, then Ken Clarke

Yes, nice tribute to an from the Speaker. 

[mongers]

I was going to start a new thread for peoples GE predictions, but since the election will be largely about Brexit, despite what Corbyn says, I think it's just best to fold the election debate into this one.

So people what's your predicted election result?


I think the Tories will have a 20-30 seat majority, probably nearer 20 than up at 30. 


The one bright spot in this election is it'll be end of Corbyn's 'leadership', unless labour is so cut down that a momentum controlled rump is all that remains?

[mongers]

In other news:

.......
UKIP leader Richard Braine has resigned saying he had not joined the party "to waste time on internal conflict".

Mr Braine was elected leader in August 2019, making him the party's eight different leader since the Brexit referendum in 2016.

He said he had wanted to unite the party but had been met with "pre-emptive opposition".
......