Ruth Davidson is Toast

Ruth Davidson is a duplicitous politician and when her party fails big after this wildly-incompetent grasping farce of a campaign she will be left exposed to chunter on and on about the referendum.

The picture painted by her supporters protesting outside the SNP conference at Perth was of a rural branch of the British Resistance, ably led by Murdo Fraser as a sort of well-heeled, if less passionate Sean Clerkin.

As her own party descends into campaign chaos she is left immune, in part because she is surrounded by lightweights and fruitcakes. I doubt the man on the street could name more than two members of her Scottish party.

Her own personal hypocrisy about her party’s homophobia – and her own nurturing of the sectarian vote in Scotland – is largely ignored by the media charmed by her backstory.

But most importantly her position that a vote – either in terms of over 50% of the MPs (29) or 50% of the vote doesn’t constitute a mandate for a second referendum is an extraordinary and dangerous denial of democracy.

Watch her being systematically taken apart by Bernard Ponsonby on STV here.

Question by question on Brexit, national insurance, debt, spending, £8 billion of cuts, pensions, and her bizarre multiple views on immigration she flounders, flops and flails:

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Comments (33)

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  1. JPJ2 says:

    She is just Kezia Dugdale with better PR.

    1. Phil says:

      ” . . . . . . better PR.”

      More expensive PR.

      1. Alf Baird says:

        Most of our ‘mainstream’ politicians today are primarily PR people. Willie Rennie’s entire adult life has been spent as PR man for the LibDems. Angus Robertson almost the same for SNP. These standard ‘types’ are in all parties.

        This is probably what makes Corbyn and his number two quite different, and hopefully more appealing to voters in rest-UK outwith Scotland, in that he is anything but a PR man. Corbyn is clearly a man of sincerity and principle. Which is doubtless why the blue/red Tory establishment despise him so; he is simply not perfidious enough for the British state’s vested interests’ liking. Corbyn is yer actual real reforming Socialist! He’s the real deal.

        1. Agreed Alf. As I have said before, Rennie is now essentially a performance artist.

    2. John Mcgowan says:

      In the light of the election outcome do you want to revisit this article? If I were you I think I would take my crystal ball back to Poundland and ask for a refund.

  2. David MacGille-Mhuire says:

    The Sash my Panzer wore with infantry support from La Dug and Rennie driving the crack troops frae Kelty having being commissioned from his bus conductor role.

    By Christ, suspect History will not be kind to them nor GE17 nor future democratic events.

    1. Alf Baird says:

      “The Sash my Panzer wore….”

      Totally braw prose, David.

  3. Katrina says:

    By the looks of those signs the NASTY party is alive and well in Scotland thanks to tRuthless Davidson. How can you call yourself a civilised society and hold up a sign that says you support the Rape Clause and that you love Benefit Sanctions? These are the policies of bullies who pick on the most vulnerable in society in order to protect the few who have spent the last 7 years extracting the wealth and growing richer at the expense of the rest of us.

    1. Craig P says:

      I think Photoshop has been used…

  4. Alba woman says:

    Ruth Davidson’s political actions speak so much louder than her words which run into nothing.

    It seems she is prepared to allow Scotland to be tainted with the legitimation and potential further development, of sectarian enclaves.

    She appears to be prepared to sit back and allow the most vulnerable women and children in Scotland to be further abused by a welfare system which has degenerated into a degrading, echoes of the workhouse, organisation.

    All of this for what Ruth? Nothing in this world is worth apparent efforts of dehumanising folk whose welfare, you have, as an elected member, some responsibility.

  5. Ian says:

    All too often all that Westminster led parties have is bluff and bluffing to walk away from Brexit talks with no deal when astonishingly, almost a year on from the vote, no detailed analysis has been done to establish the real consequences of walking away, isn’t just “incompetence of the first order” but treachery of the first order. If it related to a person and not a group of countries you’d say that they were either suicidal or insane.

    And yet there they sit question after question, bluffing and grinning inanely. Or should that be insanely?

  6. Edward says:

    Ha, ha, a true politician, don’t give an real simple answer to a real simple question. How can we trust the Tories, they lie and lie and lie with every word they speak, they make u-turn after u-turn and yet claim to be strong and stable. Weak and wobbly indeed.

  7. David says:

    There is this glaring inconsistency about FPTP elections. On the one hand the Conservative party absolutely favours this system because it is the only voting process that will give them an absolute majority in a UK general election. It is not, however, to be considered to be useful as an indicator of support for Scottish independence even if a majority of seats in Scotland are won by the SNP.

    As far as I’m aware the Tory government that has just stood down was in full control having only received around 36% of the vote and if they get about the same this time around we’ll all be told by them and by the mainstream media that they have a mandate from the British people.

    We will also no doubt be hearing again, after June 8th, that the proportionately elected Scottish parliament vote for another referendum on independence does not represent the views of the Scottish people. This will be shoved down our throats by Ruth Davidson despite the fact that, in this parliament where she sits, it was passed by a majority of the elected members who also happen to have been put there by a genuine, green/SNP combined electoral vote, of a little over fifty percent of the electorate.

    Why do we put up with this nonsense?

  8. Fiona MacLean says:

    Davidson is divorced from real Scots, she gives the impression she does not mix with anyone who is not an affluent tory. When it comes to real people’s lives in Scotland, especially poor and vulnerable people and families.

    Davidson’s and Dugdale’s whole election campaigns are based on denying Scots the democratic right to choose their own destiny!

  9. bringiton says:

    Mind numbing waffle from Davidson as she vomits sound bites all over the studio.
    Her claim that May,their colonial governor and her good self decided that the Scottish people didn’t want another independence referendum says it all.
    Democracy Tory style.
    Do we need a referendum to decide whether we should have another referendum or should we just let the Tories decide?
    She just doesn’t seem to get it that the Tories are a minority political party in Scotland and it is only with the support of Labour voters that they are gaining any traction for now.
    That is not sustainable in the longer term.

  10. Mach1 says:

    The Tory party’s responsibility for the chaos and confusion around Brexit must not be forgotten, while Ruth Davidson’s appeal to reactionaries of all stripes makes her doubly reprehensible for what comes next. As Labour and the Lib Dems are consigned to history, we face the return of a Tory regime incapable of putting the interest of the people before their own selfish goals. We also face the unedifying prospect of a standoff between the SNP-led Scottish Government and a deeply divided but nonetheless dangerous Tory Westminster elite.
    Out on the stump, the reactionaries can be tackled with the honest truth about Brexit and why we are having a snap election. The Brexit vote was about resolving internal tensions in the Tory party, which remain unresolved, hence May’s scramble for a power grab at at time of Labour disarray.
    Scotland’s only safeguard is a mandate for the SNP to reject a hard Brexit deal and attempt to salvage a sane compromise.
    Where does Ruth fit in: shamefully, as an apologist for hard Brexit and ultra-austerity, draped in the Butcher’s Apron, and giving succour to the neanderthals of the right. Let’s link her directly to her bampot constituency, and recognise that she is likely to girn on if only in appreciation of whoever is in control of the Tories at Westminster in the autumn.
    The Scottish Tory tactic of cobbling together grievances, while often creating such grievances by distorting the facts about Scottish Government achievements, even when faced by municipal Labour’s intransigence, must also be challenged. Chaos reigns, and is likely to reign for the forseeable future, thanks to the Tories. It is they who have created the uncertainty and instability which Ruth herself claims to be agin. You really could not make it up. The authors of the Dementia tax, the Bedroom Tax, the Rape Test, and the pile of ordure which is their policy on immigration, dare to claim they are protecting the elderly, the vulnerable, the left behind. Instead they are systematically sabotaging our industry and persecuting the poor and vulnerable. And they have turned their backs on a central tenet of free market economics, the benefits of the European single market and the desirability in an ageing population of increasing, rather than decreasing immigration. They also say they will protect rural communities facing the loss of EU subsidies. Be assured, they will only protect the largest landowners. The poor bloody farmers, like the poor blood fishermen, will have to take their chances with the rest of us as the Scottish budget is further cut.
    How long before the reactionary right that Ruth has been courting recognise they are subject to the mushroom theory of Tory campaigning: keep them in the dark and feed them shit.

  11. Stephen says:

    The captions above the main messages on those placards appear to be photo-shopped. Although I hate the Tories and desperately hope they lose, I can’t support wilful and deliberate distribution of material like this.

    There’s enough confusion and fake news out there already, we shouldn’t be adding to the quagmire by posting propaganda like this.

    Rise above it.

    1. These were used as a joke. I thought it was obvious.

      1. Martin Thorpe says:

        Thank you BC. I would have never guessed, but for the 10 years in the YCL/CP and the the LP: left-wing zealots having no sense of humor – HOT PRESS SENSATION, up there with bears and shitting..

  12. w.b.robertson says:

    all the posts here are fair comment at this point in time. but let us hear their explanations to what may well be Tory gains in Scotland on 8 June. (presumably the wicked media will be to blame?).

    1. Kenny Smith says:

      Eh? What part of Mars are you from? Only a daily mail reader would even leave such a comment. The media are the only reason they are even in the game. They are a shower of bastards, and although I wish them no physical harm I wish the would get what they are due from mainstream media outlets. Voty Tory, that will be shining!!!!

  13. Martin Thorpe says:

    “Ruth Davidson is a duplicitous politician”

    Much as I find her a total and utter university debating society clone. The idea that she’s alone in her windbaggery is utter tosh. The 1st minister is a complete and utter BS merchant, as are the rest of the Scottish political elite. Tory = Gay, Green = Gay, pretty well tells you everything you need to know about PC, real PC, and the reality of politics in Alba. Stuff that big sausage in me……
    Check it out kids – Cruising the Streets, 70s style…..

    1. Andy Borland says:

      “Stuff that big sausage in me ….”?

      Perish the thought. You’d clearly enjoy it too much.

    2. douglas clark says:

      Eh!

      “Tory = Gay, Green = Gay, pretty well tells you everything you need to know about PC, real PC, and the reality of politics in Alba. Stuff that big sausage in me……”

      I quite like Mhairi Black. I quite like Patrick Harvie. I think most of us have moved on from worrying about folks sexuality. If what they say resonates, then we listen, if it does not, such as “Stuff that big sausage in me…” it does not.

      Just saying that as a heterosexual man I find that pretty offensive stuff.

    3. douglas clark says:

      Apparently my comment was not received:

      In response to Martin Thorpe:

      “Tory = Gay, Green = Gay, pretty well tells you everything you need to know about PC, real PC, and the reality of politics in Alba. Stuff that big sausage in me……”

      Which misses Tory being lesbian too.

      I really like Mhairi Black, I have a lot of time for Patrick Harvie.

      Your post denigrates folk for their sexuality rather than their politics.

      Quite frankly:

      “Stuff that big sausage in me…”

      Tells us all we have to know about you.

    4. Hi Martin, we don’t tolerate homophobia on this site. Bye bye!

  14. douglas clark says:

    Firstly for moderators or whoever looks after this site, I have never been a certain Gordon Bruce. It is entirely possible that my last two posts, which were directed at Martin Thorpe will never appear here. However, I’ll try one last time:

    Martin:

    I quite like Mhairi Black and Patrick Harvie. Their sexuality is of no interest to me. But what they say does.

    Your comment:

    “Stuff that big sausage in me……”

    Has more to do with homophobia than politics.

    I think you should take a rain check before commenting on here again.

    1. Wul says:

      There seems to be a glitch on this site Douglas. My own comments do not appear until several minutes, sometimes an hour after posting. It puts me off posting now.

      Maybe someone from Bella could look into this?

      (How about a separate fundraiser for a better, faster web-site? I’d happily chip in for this, Bella is needed more & more as our MSM becomes a cartoon world)

      1. douglas clark says:

        Wul,

        Testing.

        But while I’m here, I agree. If Bella needs some dosh to sort this out, I’ll chip in a tenner.

      2. Hi Wullie
        I’ll look into this, thanks. We’ve actually just moved to our own dedicated server so loading times are much much faster.

        We’re in the process of re-developing the site as we speak and we’ll be launching a crowd-funder next month…

  15. John says:

    Loved the Ponsonby interview , that kind of cross- examination is normally reserved for Nicola Sturgeon or any other SNP MP who dares to stick their head above the parapet. The interview showed how very shallow this so called politician is , there is absolutely no substance to her . Ruth Davidson has no message other than” No Independence ” , take her out of her comfort zone and she is completely lost ! .

  16. Graeme Purves says:

    There would appear to be an opportunity opening here for the ambitious Professor Tomkins who, by the looks of that interview, may already have resigned his position as “Ruth Davidson’s brain”. Cometh the hour, cometh the man?

    1. John says:

      Have always said Davidson would need to watch her back after the new intake of MSP . There are a few in that bunch that see themselves as being able to take her down , she is making it easy for them !

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