The Conservatives must take time to “get this decision right” when choosing their new leader, Baroness Ruth Davidson has said. The former Scottish Tory leader also told her party that whoever succeeds Rishi Sunak must be given time in the role, stressing that “chopping and changing” leaders, as the party has done, makes it look “increasingly chaotic and rudderless”. Advertisement Advertisement Sign up to our Politics newsletter Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more.
Baroness Davidson said the defeat her party suffered had been “years in the making and was handed out by voters who wanted to see us punished”. In the wake of that, she said the remaining Conservative MPs would need to “adjust to being in opposition and understanding what rebuilding entails”. Baroness Davidson was at one point tipped as a future UK Tory leader after her success in reviving the party’s fortunes in Scotland, but quit as Scottish Conservative leader in 2019.
She said: “Rebuilding in opposition is something I have a bit of experience of, and from a lower base than the UK party is facing now. “When I became the Scottish Conservative leader in 2011, I inherited a party that had gone from pity to outright scorn.” But she said her time in charge the Scottish Tories “more than doubled what w.