April fools was weeks ago but Ruth Davidson leader of Scotland’s third most popular political Party has still been named by Time magazine on its annual list of the 100 most influential people in the World (population 7,632,819,325). So, who on that said Earth would back such a claim? And what type of person are they.
If you guessed some ultra-Unionist, Scotland hating, Jock who hasn’t lived here in decades… well done, you guessed right.
US based historian Niall Campbell Ferguson, author of the gushing ‘Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World’, is a big fan of the British Empire and of the US Republican Party.
He doesn’t like the SNP or Scotland much though. In that recognisably Unionist way of insulting two countries in one go- he refers to it as ‘the Belarus of the West’. Scotland, Ferguson suggested, should be “put into liquidation.”
It seems like Niall thinks little of his former homeland and is “baffled” by the idea it should seek independence. The Time list for which he chose Ruth Davidson is not a list of genuinely ‘influential people’ but rather of individuals ‘whose time is now’. Apparently Ruth’s time is now. We’re reaching Peak Ruth.
So is Peak Ruth: leading her party to third in the polls? Back behind a lame Scottish Labour and still light years behind the SNP. Her Scottish Tories are so mind bogglingly far behind the party of government that Daily Mail hack Stephen Daisley felt compelled to write a piece in which he struggled to rationalise the mere hope of a potential FM Ruth.
Ruth herself, however, sees so little chance of Holyrood progress that she is reportedly wooing English Tories in Sussex in the hopes of bagging a face saving escape route through a Westminster seat.
Or maybe Peak Ruth is more personal than Party. Being crowned ‘Star Baker’ after winning the Celebrity Great British Bake Off for 2018. She’s always up for a zany photoshoot or quiz show appearance. Indeed her main skill, aside from cake making, seems to be self promotion, using her BBC training, to look relaxed on camera.
This is probably the main thing that marks her out from her more dour colleagues- even if her smiles and laughs do often come mistimed and with a weird, off putting, intensity such that you wouldn’t be surprised to see Ruth walking round a children’s hospice grinning madly, like Stevie Wonder coming on for an encore.
Certainly Peak Ruth is a minor British celebrity and much of the political press seems star struck. They rarely ask her the tough questions they should. Amusingly a BBC report has even absentmindedly referred to her as “Scottish First Minister, Ruth Davidson”.
Ruth isn’t First Minister though. There remains a huge chasm between what the Scottish people want and what the Tory press tells them they should want.
