Reuters reports: Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson has delivered the party’s biggest success in Scotland in a generation, leading a dogged charge against independence from the United Kingdom that has left the nationalist movement reeling.

Davidson, whose colourful humour and approachability has won her many fans, notched up the Conservatives’ best result since 1983 north of the border. She may yet prove key to choosing a new leader to replace the party’s nationwide leader, Prime Minister Theresa May, whose future is now in question.

With an easy, raucous laugh, she is a self-described “shovel-faced lesbian”, a literature graduate and a former journalist who says the army taught her the art of leadership when she was a reservist.

Davidson, 38, has unapologetically stood up for the United Kingdom.

“I’ve never been afraid of debate and clash and think that’s part of it. It’s important that the Conservative voice isn’t delegitimised,” she told Reuters prior to the election.

In Britain’s constantly shifting political landscape, she has reached Scottish voters by sticking to a message they not only understand but care about, as well as being more ordinary than the elite associated with her party 400 miles (644 km) down south in London.

“I’m proud to be Scottish and British and female and gay and Christian and Conservative and a Fifer and fond of chips, a fan of “Hamilton” the musical and to prefer dogs to cats,” she told an audience at the Orwell Foundation last month. [Continue reading…]