IF Ruth Davidson is elevated to the ermine in Boris Johnson’s honours list, she will be in interesting company. Of the circa 800 members of the Lords, around 70 register their address as living in Scotland, which surprisingly is roughly Scotland’s population share. Curiously, lots of peers not domiciled in Scotland have taken Scottish locations for their title (aka “peerage postmark”). They include Baron Lamont of Lerwick, otherwise the former Tory Chancellor Norman Lamont. Perhaps they see this as a way of getting a Scottish passport after independence.
Some peers are assiduous attenders – I well remember that national treasure, Baron Foulkes of Cumnock Lord, frequenting (somewhat illicitly) the MP’s tearoom on many an afternoon. We used to chat which garnered no end of bad looks from Labour MPs. However, our Ruth will not be able to avoid Baron McFall of Alcluith, the gruff Dumbartonshire GMB union member turned current Deputy Speaker of the Lords – which makes him No. 2 in the “other place”.
Alas, Ruth arrives a mite too late to meet the hereditary Countess of Mar, who retired in May after a lifetime representing Britain’s oldest earldom as well as the nation’s landed interest. Or Baron Darling of Roulanish, who quit this year after only four years on the red benches. Was he bored?
Doubtless Ruth is being recruited to the Lords because Boris thinks she will give the Tories some clout in Scotland. That hardly speaks volumes for the current Secretary of State, Alister Jack, the former tent-hire magnet turned farmer. It should also signal to the remaining Scots Conservative backbenchers that no matter how slavish or servile they are at PMQs, they have been judged useless by the Boss. The Tank Commander is back in town.
Mind you, Scottish peers have never found it that easy in London. They supported the Act of Union to protect their feudal privileges only to have most of those rights removed by the House of Commons, in revenge for the ’45 Jacobite Rebellion. After that, Scots peers settled down to milk the system. A few ended up in Downing Street, notably the Earl of Rosebery, who was Britain’s richest ever PM. The last to get the main job was the Earl of Hume in 1963, though he had to give up his peerage to do so. The Earl was with Chamberlain in Munich to agree the infamous deal with Hitler, carving up Czechoslovakia.
Will Ruth fare any better? She already knows her way around Westminster and Whitehall – I once bumped into her in Dover House where she seemed very much at home and happily up-staging the then Secretary of State, David Mundell. Mind you, those were the days when the media were touting her as a future prime minister. I noticed she was surrounded by droves of toadying Tories and staffers. I doubt if she will get that kind of adulation now.
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Boris, not to mention Cummings, is much more politically brutal than his clownish demeanour suggests. He gets rid of folk who don’t do the business – witness this de facto demotion of Alister Jack, who will now struggle to get his press releases read. Davidson needs to perform, or Downing Street will drop her.
Boris is clearly rattled by the rise in support for independence. Davison has been pressured into taking a frontline role in stemming the tide, despite earlier protestations she wants to be with her family. But saving the Union is no part-time affair. And she carries baggage – anti-Brexit and also anti-Boris when he was stalking the premiership. We will soon see if the Tank Commander still has a glint of steel in eye. Or if she disappears into the red benches rather like a certain Baroness Goldie of Bishopton.
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