I cannot wait to see what Ruth Davidson does next

“She’s the brightest and best thing to hit the party in years,” said one leading Scottish Conservative to me in 2011. Ruth Davidson had just announced she was standing for leader of the party. I was a foot soldier in what seemed an ageing, dwindling band of Scottish Conservatives fighting against an overwhelming Labour force. But I saw exactly what he meant. Ruth had something that no other candidate had: courage.

Other factors have helped, but she has been the key to achieving last week’s stunning Scottish election result. The Conservatives won 31 seats—seven more than Labour, and 16 more than in 2011.

Before Ruth appeared, Scottish Tories were mostly middle-class pensioners and landed gentry in rural parts of the country. Their common characteristic was extreme loyalty to the party in the face of successive defeats. Even when, in 1997, the Conservatives failed to win a single Westminster seat in Scotland, these small pockets of dogged resistance vowed to fight on. In the wilderness years that followed, they never gave up hope. They were, however, dying off.

I first had a stab at local elections in 2003, when I was a 25-year-old journalist. I felt my community in Ayrshire faced many problems that no one seemed to be doing anything about. So I joined the cheerful Conservatives running a highly efficient campaign HQ in my town of Ayr—the same team who backed Ruth for the leadership eight years later.

They were driven and committed, operating from a basement akin to a Mittelstand factory. Machines whirred, phones rang and volunteers bustled in to pick up stacks of leaflets for delivery. They took my photograph, put my election literature together and pointed me in the right direction to deliver it. Back then, I took all this for granted. Only later, when I stood in a general election in England, did I realise how rare and precious it was. Our supporters were generous donors but they were few in number and recruitment was tough. Despite our efforts, success at the polls was limited.

In Scotland, the perception of the Conservative party as the author of the hated poll tax and the embodiment of English hegemony overshadowed every conversation on the doorstep. Discussions about issues such as jobs, healthcare and policing—or even play areas, poor roads and dog fouling—were stymied by the emotional response to my blue rosette. Labour held absolute sway. The SNP had yet to emerge (even I managed to get more votes than them in 2003).

Various solutions to the Tories’ appalling image problem in Scotland were mooted, from backing independence, to a name change, to abolishing the Scottish Conservatives altogether and creating a new party of the right. Ironically, it was devolution in 1998 by the Labour government, initially opposed by Scottish Conservatives, that eventually made it possible for Tories to re-emerge. The system of proportional representation gave Conservative voters a voice and seats in the Scottish parliament.

Down South, however, it seemed that English Conservatives no longer cared what happened in Scotland. Conservative top brass respected the then Scottish leader Annabel Goldie, but had given up on a political revival. Throughout the noughties, Scottish events at the Party Conference were sparsely attended.

Then in 2011, Goldie decided to step down following the SNP landslide victory for Holyrood. At the Conservative conference in Manchester later that year, I went along to the hustings for the new leader. Ruth immediately stood out. First, because of her youth—she is still only 37—and second, because of her bravery.

Murdo Fraser, one of her rivals for the leadership, was advocating disbanding the party and creating a new one. Ruth rejected this counsel of despair, and convinced a sceptical audience that she could restore one of the most toxic brands in modern politics. Most importantly, she persuaded David Cameron to back her unreservedly. She was warm and positive, but realistic about the task ahead. This gave her an authenticity that had nothing to do with her background or life story, and everything to do with her character. I hastily texted my local MSP in excitement, asking how I could support Ruth.

Now, almost 20 years after the 1997 wipe-out, she has achieved something extraordinary—she has persuaded the Scottish people that the Conservatives can represent them. Part of this has been due to a Conservative Prime Minister agreeing to hold a referendum on Scottish independence. By letting Alex Salmond choose the question, pick the voting date and the length of the campaign, the Conservatives ensured that the SNP leader had no option but to resign when Scotland voted to stay in the UK.

Part of it has been due to George Osborne’s decision to devolve tax-raising powers to Holyrood, forcing local politicians to take responsibility for raising the money they spend. And part has been due to the unexpected collapse of Labour. This has led to a polarisation of the debate in Scotland between a left-of-centre party pushing for separation and a right-of-centre party raising a rallying cry for unity. As one Scottish Tory peer puts it: “Scots now know they hold the key to the future of the Union.”

But the biggest change of all has been the transformation of the Scottish Conservatives from marginalised activists to the official opposition. And none of that could have happened without the right person at the helm. With her tenacity and good humour, Ruth has far exceeded the most optimistic expectations. These days, Scottish events at the party conference are so packed that you have to wrestle your way into them. I cannot wait to see what she does next.