RUTH Davidson has claimed the "chopping and changing" of UK Tory leaders has made the party look "rudderless and chaotic".
The former party leader said the "General Election rout" had been "years in the making" and insisted whoever replaces Rishi Sunak should be given time in the role.
Writing in The Sunday Times, she said there was no point "in getting frustrated if a new leader doesn’t reverse a poll lead overnight.”
Davidson was at one point tipped as a future UK Tory leader after she revived 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 we had” in Westminster, Holyrood and Scottish council elections, with this “showing the improvement was real and solid, not a one-off lucky hit”.
Now she said the UK Conservative Party “has a little under five years to get itself together to try and bounce back from the worst electoral drubbing in its 190-year history”.
Recalling the party’s repeated changes in leadership in recent years which saw Sunak take over after a brief period in charge for Liz Truss, who herself succeeded Boris Johnson, Davidson said: “Chopping and changing five leaders in eight years did nothing for our fortunes, it just made us look increasingly chaotic and rudderless.
“If we look at party leaders who successfully changed the government, (Tony) Blair was leader of the opposition for three years, both Margaret Thatcher and (Sir Keir) Starmer had four years to establish themselves while (David) Cameron spent five years building up his profile and the party’s standing before transplanting Labour.”
She added: “After a defeat as heavy as the one we just suffered, it would be easy to form a counsel of despair or to be too shellshocked to take the correct decisions and lay the building blocks for future success.”
Davidson praised Sunak for having vowed to stay on as party leader while Tories hunt for his successor.
The new leader must be someone with the “ability to talk over the heads of the party and to the country at large” and with “broad appeal” so they can “win votes back from other parties,” she argued.
But the former Scottish Tory leader stressed: “We should take our time and get this decision right."
