If Jackson Carlaw says it, it must be true. Ruth Davidson will be the next First Minister of Scotland.

I know, it makes you wonder is Carlaw is feeling the strain of deputising for the maternity-leave leader of the Scottish Tories too much.

Scoff if you like, but then look at how the Tory frontbench are alive in the moment, revelling in watching the paint peel off the 12-year-old SNP Government, exposing the inevitable corrosion of policy, energy and personnel.

Though the SNP managed a double-whammy of changing leader and changing clothes to become a left of centre, west of Scotland, Labour replacement while still in government, the party is incapable of renewing the mission.

They are stuck in the Star Trek loop, “to boldly go where no man has gone before”, in search of independence.

It can’t be any other way really, but after two decades of devolution it strikes some that the electorate might actually want a party to get on with devolved government.


Instead of a Year Zero comprehensive spending review, to give a parliament now endowed with substantial tax-raising powers (take a bow, the Vow) new priorities, Finance Secretary Derek Mackay is left scrabbling around council car parks with the Minions looking for 50p coins under the tyres.

In principle, workplace car charging is a commendable nudge away from polluting the planet but you can’t introduce it while savaging council budgets that provide bus services and signalling you don’t believe in public transport by cancelling rail investments like the Glasgow airport link.

If the SNP pin all hope on referendums but don’t work for renewal, down the rabbit hole they go, so the Tories think. That’s why Carlaw insisted this week that it was “perfectly possible, if not, in fact, now likely” that Davidson will lead the next Scottish Government.

For Tory MPs at Westminster, staggered at the incompetence of their own Ministers, the dream lives on for Davidson to walk up Downing Street as Prime Minister.

Perhaps she is the only potential Tory PM capable of holding May’s “precious union” together.

But Davidson herself has dismissed this “thane of Cawdor, and king hereafter" version of the future. She thinks, probably correctly, that the mental pressure of being Prime Minister is actually damaging to the holder of the office.


Only David Cameron, cushioned by a life of privilege, managed to “tum te tum" himself out of Downing Street. The tune will have to be the title of his long awaited memoir. Easier to imagine Davidson in Bute House, the leader of a minority Conservative administration.

In a 2021 Holyrood election still divided on the binary question of independence, a referendum on whether to have a referendum if you like, it is easy to see Labour unionists in the west of Scotland switching their list votes to the Tories.

Davidson, already the most authentic leader on the block, matured by motherhood, might in the wealthier, more conservative east be the one to reach out to these pro-Leave, once-SNP voters distanced from their own party.

It would be a strange electoral alliance in what would be a post-Brexit Scotland. Davidson, or any First Minister, would be defined by these circumstances.

If the economy tanks long-term after Brexit, and private investors flee, governments will have to become more Kenysian and step in to boost the economy with public spending.


Even a Tory government at Holyrood might have to act like a socialist one, which would present the biggest headache of all for the Labour Party when it comes down to which way to jump on a budget vote.

It would be Labour MSPs who’d feel the heat. I don’t see a breakaway Labour Party, if it comes to it, having much impact in Scotland – there are plenty other places for voters to go.

Just like a deal on Brexit in Westminster comes down to Labour votes, so too might a future Scottish Tory government rely on Labour to get its blue/red budget through.

Now, if you’re a long game nationalist, whose cause do you think that would boost the most?

War of words over Churchill's chequered history

Looking at my watch, it’s 42 days until Brexit and the biggest political row of the day is whether Winston Churchill was good or evil?

Good grief.

In a quick-fire question and answer session, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, who can’t forgive Churchill for using troops against striking miners in Wales in 1910 (yes, that’s 109 years ago), decided the wartime leader was “a villain”.

Cue outrage that makes Green-eared MSP Ross Greer’s public scouring for describing Churchill as a “white supremacist” and a “mass murderer.” look like a grazed knee.

Where we are placed along the timeline gives us all a different perspective of history.

Churchill was a hugely controversial figure in his lifetime, and after.

Winston Churchill was a hugely controversial figure in his lifetime, and after

The view that Churchill was the lynchpin that saved Britain in its darkest hour is well established and fed in large part the Brexit myth-making of having always stood alone against the continent, although countless European, Commonwealth and US lives were also sacrificed.

McDonnell refined his view yesterday. He said: “Churchill was obviously a hero during the Second World War but there’s another side to Churchill in our history. Many working class people at the time and well into the 40s and 50s were angry about his behaviour.”

My late father, who was actually at the game, would have concurred. He hated Churchill and delighted in telling us how, along with other WWII veterans, he stuck two fingers up at the wartime leader in Glasgow’s George Square and booted him out in the 45 election.

Mind you, my dad also hated Tony Benn, Labour’s son of privilege who would never have to live with the consequences of his politics, he said.

He was the original centrist Dad, I suppose, gone 25 years ago this month. Who says we are not shaped by our history?

● While we’re down memory lane I’m saddened by the death of Gordon Banks, England’s greatest goalie. His passing shows how far we have travelled in my lifetime. Banks was one of our childhood heroes, older boys in our island villages had nicknames like “Charlton” and “Nobby” in honour of that England 66 team.

I can’t imagine anyone shouting “Rooney” or “Kane” in a Scottish school playground now. Do kids even have nicknames these days?

My teen guru tells me it would be “just weird” to have one.