Brian Monteith: Cold comfort food fails to tickle the taste buds

If 2012 is to be the year Ruth Davidson tells us who she really is, what she believes in and how such revelations are going to reverse the long-term decline of the Scottish Conservatives then she really has to raise her game.

Her first of a number of keynote speeches delivered last week was a damp squib more appropriate for a dreich November bonfire night than the snap, crackle and pop of a firecracker she should have kicked the new year off with.

It was an opportunity to become noticed and to turn heads by showing us she is not a mini-me of Annabel Goldie but has her own voice with a resonance for modern times. We needed to hear from the Babe Ruth of social media, as she was adroitly christened by a Scotsman blogger, rather than a latter day Daphne Broon trapped in those idyllic 1950s when few had television never mind an iPhone with apps.

Sadly there were no home runs and I am left wondering when I will begin to hear anything that justifies the universal expectation of change Davidson has encouraged, but which thus far has been rather thinly limited to her lifestyle, age and lack of political baggage (that might otherwise be called inexperience).

A Conservative strategist should have advised Davidson to set herself a number of goals to aim at. Firstly she needed to make a statement that offered hope of further change by challenging some old Tory orthodoxies she might want to slay.

Secondly, by choosing a surprising venue and unconventional audience she could have defined herself and point to where she wishes to take her party.

Thirdly, she needed to be clearer about what her values really mean – by abandoning the old menu of comfort-food platitudes and introducing some key phrases that would show her as positive, open-minded and a breath of fresh air. She needs to restate why she is a moderniser rather than an infant dinosaur of the past.

Before her first keynote speech the first few months of her leadership should have been used to establish what people think about Ruth Davidson and, on the assumption they know of her at all, to then identify her positives and negatives so that she can begin to accentuate the former and change perceptions about the latter.

Future surveys could then be measured against this baseline to reveal where progress is being achieved and where more work is needed – with the information given to her supporters and financial backers in lieu of real results in future elections.

Also important is the need to establish what ideas and messages could influence potential supporters who might be willing to change their political allegiances so that such nuances could be taken account of in the policy formulation. From reading and hearing Davidson’s speech I cannot say any of those three goals were considered or the standard marketing approaches were attempted; indeed when I closed my eyes I began to hear her predecessor delivering essentially the same speech like I was in a particularly painful Groundhog Day.

Maybe while Davidson worked for Goldie she was her speechwriter and has not yet kicked the old habits of vagueness and worldly-wise homilies. Whatever the cause, Davidson needs help from outside her current narrow circle and needs it badly.

She could do worse than turn to two people who know a thing or two about policy and politics in Scotland: Geoff Mawdsley and Struan Stevenson.

Mawdsley has been an elected politician, a senior political adviser and has with great skill and fortitude developed Reform Scotland into the leading independent policy think-tank in Scotland, bar none. For all his Conservative pedigree Mawdsley has shown how it is possible to engage and then work closely with leading politicians from all parties, be they nationalist or unionist, socialist or capitalist, so that they may find utility in the ideas that he and his co-authors formulate.

In today’s contemporary Scotland where, despite Alex Salmond’s historic victory last year, working in coalition will be the political norm, such a skill should be highly prized by the new Tory leader. A long, relaxed dinner with Mawdsley – without any other advisers present – should be pencilled into Davidson’s diary within the week.

Struan Stevenson offers different qualities that could be crucial to Davidson. An elected politician of more than 40 years’ standing but with continuing good humour and an engaging warm personality that builds friends and allies across the political divide, Stevenson has announced that he will not seek re-election as an MEP in 2014 despite being on the young side of his 60s.

If there is a wise Tory head available to help Babe Ruth being struck out while crafting a winning strategy that can engage with the party activists, then I know of no-one better qualified than Stevenson.

His past support for Murdo Fraser should not count against him, in fact it should be seen as a positive, for by giving Stevenson a prominent role – and the most obvious one is non-executive chairman – then he could build useful relations with all those financial backers of Fraser that have now started to drift off and forget about helping the Conservatives for the next five years.

Making the Scottish Conservatives more financially self-reliant should be a goal of Davidson’s, for that is how she will give herself more freedom to take the party where she wants to go.

So far all that has been promised is more speeches like last week’s and a thorough review of policy – but even here we have been here before. Davidson need only ask her Holyrood colleague Liz Smith about the education policy committee she led in the late Nineties, one of the many set up under Lord Strathclyde’s reforms after the Tory–wipe-out in 1997. Those committees fed into the most radical Tory manifesto of 1999 that has been watered down ever since. It is that sort of radicalism that needs to be rediscovered.

The next speech will have to make a bigger impression than her first attempt. She is now completely in charge and has the authority and the mandate. After that, three strikes and you’re out, and that would be an opportunity missed.