ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SKY NEWS, SOPHY RIDGE ON SUNDAY

SOPHY RIDGE: Ruth Davidson has been credited with leading the resurgence of the Conservative party in Scotland and without Scottish MPs the Tories would have actually lost the last election so little wonder perhaps that she’s been tipped as a future Prime Minister, something she ruled out in the last week, so let’s find out why. Welcome, thank very much for being with us. I was talking to the Tory party chairman, Brandon Lewis, earlier on in the programme about this security breach. It could be quite serious couldn’t it at a time when our political discourse is so toxic, have you received any calls from any pranksters?

RUTH DAVIDSON: Well no but then I didn’t put my mobile number in the app. But to be honest I think there was an issue there, it has been resolved, it got resolved very quickly but people don’t have to have your mobile number to be toxic to you, you can see that on social media every day so yes of course the party has been through all of the appropriate inspections and remedies that are there and it is embarrassing, there is no getting away from that, but it was identified early, it was fixed quickly and then we move on.

SR: Well let’s move on. Brexit of course is the big issue going into Conservative party conference, you campaigned very strongly for Remain in that referendum. Now the only credible proposal on the table we are told is the Chequers arrangement, something Boris Johnson has described as deranged and something the EU has said will not work. If it was a choice between no deal and a second referendum, would you support a second referendum?

RUTH DAVIDSON: First of all I think I need to address the premise of your question because yes, there are areas of impasse between the EU and the United Kingdom government position but we know they are working on that and after Salzburg blew up, which slightly cleared the air actually, we know that officials are working very closely together from the UK and the Irish side on proposals on the Irish backstop and also between the UK and the EU sides to look at the impasse of the economic agreement so I think there is still a basis there for a deal to be done and I would always prefer there to be a deal than no deal but when it comes or rerunning referendums I would be an enormous hypocrite if I said just because it was one that I had lost as a Remainer we should immediately have redone it when I spent four years in Scotland saying Nicola Sturgeon shouldn’t get another one on independence because that’s one that I won. So I am not actually in agreement that we need to have another referendum.

SR: Would you prefer to see no deal then than a second referendum?

RUTH DAVIDSON: Well I think that’s a false choice that you are giving us because there is a deal on the table that everyone is working towards …

SR: Well it’s not really a false choice is it because Theresa May has said she prefers to see no deal rather than a bad deal so she has spoken of the possibility of no deal, the government has been saying they are making preparations for no deal, it’s not something that I am just pulling out my back pocket, it’s something that we are talking about.

RUTH DAVIDSON: Well if you criticise the government, as people were earlier this year, for not doing enough preparations for the possibly of no deal and then criticise them for doing preparations for no deal – and I can say that the Prime Minister’s choice is between a deal or no deal, not between some form of deal or another referendum, that’s no what’s on the table. What’s on the table is a credible set of proposals, we are a long way towards getting agreement, there are [inaudible] and I think it behoves the government and the EU to try and make sure that we deliver for the people of all of our respective countries and that means trying to resolve those areas of impasse. We have got a very tight time schedule before the next EU summit in October but I feel there is a deal there to be done and I support the Prime Minister in getting it. I think part of what the party should be doing is giving her the space to get in and get the job done and I think perhaps some of the noises off perhaps need to calm down.

SR: Calling the deal deranged, that’s probably not something that you’d …

RUTH DAVIDSON: You know, I don’t particularly use language like that when I am discussing areas of geopolitics and I don’t think it is wise so to do but what I think is strange about some of the attacks in the newspapers today is this is someone who was praising what the Prime Minister brought home in terms of terms of moving onto the next stage last December, someone who was in one of the great offices of state, who was sitting round the Cabinet table who now says he was in some way deceived. Now I don’t sit around the Cabinet table, I’m not in government but I knew what was being said in December, I’m not quite sure how the former Foreign Secretary didn’t.

SR: So he is being a hypocrite?

RUTH DAVIDSON: Well I mean … I think what’s interesting in today’s coverage is he seems to be spending an awful lot of time talking about his London Mayoralship and very little time, in fact he has not even mentioned the fact that he was Foreign Secretary for two years and was in the room helping to influence this and indeed was praising it as soon ago as December.

SR: Now after the referendum in July 2016 you said in an interview “I want to stay in the single market even if the consequence of that is maintaining free movement of labour.” So is that still your view?

RUTH DAVIDSON: Well I’d been asked about where my position was in regards to the different options on the table. I was saying look, I’m a Remainer, I would have stayed in the EU if that was the option and that’s what I voted for and if there were to be another referendum although [there’s not one], I would vote for that again but we do have to respect the democratic mandate of the biggest electoral event we’ve ever had in this country. 17 and a half million people voted for something I didn’t vote for and you have to honour it.

SR: But you could still honour it by going for the Norway model for example where we would be outside of the EU but still within the single market, you would prefer that really wouldn’t you?

RUTH DAVIDSON: Well I think the issue that we have with that is what was it that people were voting for when they voted to leave. I took part in a huge number of debates up and down the country, some of them televised, some of them in town halls and the rest of it, and I was continually being challenged by those on the other side about this idea that in some way voting Leave would get in the way of trade and one of the main proponents arguments on the other side is that we would be able to sign free trade deals with other countries. Now if we stay in a customs union that’s not something that we are going to be able to do. It also means that any trade deals that the EU strikes would apply to us and we wouldn’t be able to be part of deciding what’s in them. So do you know what, I do think one of the issues with the referendum was it was quite a short campaign and we didn’t explore all these options before the vote but I think I would find it quite hard to argue that that wasn’t something that was laid out by the other side.

SR: Now we have been talking about Brexit in this interview, Theresa May, Boris Johnson will pick up on that today. Does it worry you that all of the bandwidth if you like in the Conservative party is being occupied by Brexit and there isn’t enough big thinking going on on some of the other issues, the domestic issues that are really important, that you are going to sell on the doorstep?

RUTH DAVIDSON: Well I think that one of the things that we’re trying to do at this conference is to talk about practical delivery for people and that’s why we see the announcements that have been brought out have been about building more homes, helping young people get on the housing ladder …

SR: Have you done enough of that do you think?

RUTH DAVIDSON: Well I think the timing of this, you know we are four, five weeks before the EU summit so Brexit was always going to dominate and indeed your questions to me so far have all been about that because it’s the big issue of the day but don’t think the UK government is not getting on with the job because they are, they are committed to doing so but I do think we also have to prepare ourselves for a post-Brexit national debate, what is the UK in the world? People are asking these questions and I would like to think I am going to be one of the people who can help contribute to that debate and to show that we are a country who shoulders our burden in the world, that we are one of the people who make sure that the global rules apply and that we help others with our soft power. We have just returned for the first time in a number of years to being the highest and most influential soft power country in the world and that’s why I think we see the government looking at things like the Festival of Britain and all the other areas.

SR: Now you have written a book called Yes You Can which I am quite keen to talk to you about as well. It’s all about celebrating women’s achievements …

RUTH DAVIDSON: That’s a big bold, it was designed to come out a hundred years after the first women got the vote and it talks about how far we’ve come but actually quite a crucial part of it is how we’ve still got that next step to take.

SR: On that note, do you think Theresa May, she shows how far we’ve come but do you think she also shows how far we’ve got to go? Do you think she has had a hard time as Prime Minister because she’s a woman?

RUTH DAVIDSON: Well actually she is one of the women that’s in the book who allowed me to interview her and she talks herself about the work that she’s done in setting up Women To Win which is a Conservative proposal to get more women into politics. It’s a non-partisan book, there is also the head of the TUC and the co-founder of the Women’s Equality Party and other political women and non-political women in there as well.

SR: But do you think she has had a harder time?

RUTH DAVIDSON: I think anyone who would be dealing with an issue as big and as complex as Brexit which has divided the country, and binary referendums always do, would be under severe criticism at the moment and would be shouldering quite a heavy burden in office and I think we probably won’t even know until after the dust has settled when we look back and see just how impressive and resilient she has been during this time. I think some of the colour and some of the cartoons and the commentary do absolutely pick up on her femininity and the fact that she’s a woman. Is that harder than David Cameron got with some of the things said about him or Tony Blair? I’m not so sure.

SR: Now it’s a very personal book isn’t it? You talk about your own experiences with depression and actually I found it quite difficult to read, that part where you talk about trying to punish yourself, cutting your stomach, cutting your arms. I mean how difficult was that period of your life and also why did you decided to write about it?

RUTH DAVIDSON: Well it happened quite a long time ago, I was first diagnosed with clinical depression at 18 when I was at university and I think looking back on that period now, so that was over 20 years ago, we didn’t really talk about it very much then and I didn’t have much information, I didn’t have anyone in the public eye, I really thought that it was a full stop to all of my dreams and ambitions that every 18 year old has and I remember speaking two or three years ago to one of the really big mental health charities in Scotland about wanting to be able to talk about that so that hopefully it helps someone else who is in a place now that I was back then to know that it’s not a full stop to your life and it’s not … It’s sometimes talked about as something that happens and then is fixed but it’s something that you have ongoing management with and it would have really helped me if I had had somebody in the public eye saying that. You have got Prince Harry and you’ve got sports stars and you’ve got business people saying it and I’ve not heard that many people from politics saying it and it’s taken me this amount of time to kind of work up the courage and find a vehicle where I could tell it in my own words and not have it distorted through the words of journalists like yourself!

SR: You talked about not having an unexamined life and I put the question and I can see …

RUTH DAVIDSON: Well it has been something that has been growing in my mind for some time and I think if it ever got to the point, and I hope I have got a number of years in me as Scottish Conservative leader, if I ever got to the point where I’d left office and I’d never spoken about it, I think I’d feel as if I’d done something wrong or done a disservice or maybe not been brave enough. Not done enough, you know.

SR: In the book as well you talk about that famous New Statesman article where they talked about women with children and why so few women with children have reached the top in politics. Are you right that you’re still in the grey area of being pregnant but not …

RUTH DAVIDSON: Yes, a grey area!

SR: And saying you have no idea how changing family responsibilities will affect the way I do my job. Are you worried about that? Do you think that having a child might impact your career?

RUTH DAVIDSON: Well to be honest, I’ve four weeks to go until my due date so I think rather than worrying about how the child will affect the job I’m worried about how the job will affect the child because those are my priorities at the moment, making sure this one comes into the world with ten fingers, ten toes is top of my list.

SR: Is that one reason why you ruled out running for the top job as well?

RUTH DAVIDSON: No, I’ve been saying that for about three or four years, since David Cameron very kindly tipped me as a potential successor and it’s been hanging around my neck ever since then. I know what my job is and it’s in Scotland and I know what I want to do and I want to be the first Conservative First Minister of Scotland and I want to do that in my home town of Edinburgh where I’ve got not just the job that I want and I’m ambitious for the country but I’ve also got all of the other things that matter in life – my loved ones, my family, my friends, my child hopefully – around me but I’m long enough in the tooth to know that there are some things that I won’t be able to control until I know what it’s like so we’ve got a plan, we’ve got a plan for me taking a bit of time off and then I’ll go back to work and all the rest of it but we’ve built in a lot of flexibility because like thousands of women across Britain, I just don’t know how it is going to quite work.

SR: And before you go I need to ask you as somebody who played such a leading role in the debates during the referendum, do you support Sky News’s campaign to see an independent commission on leaders’ debates?

RUTH DAVIDSON: Well in Scotland we have multiple debates for every election, I’ve fought six elections and two referenda in seven years, so we have them all of the time so I certainly am well up for any sort of fight but in terms of having to create a quango to decide something that is going to happen three and a half years from now, I think in terms of the pressing questions in the UK it’s a little bit further down the list.

SR: But you are pro debates?

RUTH DAVIDSON: Certainly in Scotland I do them quite often and I’ve never shied away from a fight in my life.

SR: Okay, Ruth Davidson, thank you very much.