RUTH Davidson has said she “wouldn’t say no” to going back into frontline politics via the Lords, in a similar way to David Cameron.
Former prime minister Cameron was handed a life peerage by Rishi Sunak last year – becoming Baron Cameron of Chipping Norton - which enabled him to become foreign secretary.
In a conversation with broadcaster Matthew Stadlen at the Edinburgh Fringe, Davidson was asked if she would ever go back into frontline politics “if a future Tory government said ‘you’re a Lord, come and join us’ in the way David Cameron became foreign secretary”.
She replied: “I would never say no.”
Her comments came after she spent the first part of the show saying she was “deeply uncomfortable” with the title of Baroness and would “vote herself out of there” - the Lords - if reform was on the table.
The former Scottish Conservative leader was made a life peer in July 2021, becoming Baroness Davidson of Lundin Links.
But last year in February, it was revealed she had only made four speeches and asked two questions in the year after she’d been appointed to the upper chamber, all the while claiming nearly £25,000 in expenses in that year.
She told Stadlen that she didn’t like using the title of Baroness and felt as if she “shouldn’t be” in the Lords.
Asked what it was like to be a Baroness, Davidson replied: “How long have you got to fill if I walk off [stage] right now?
“It’s an absolute privilege to sit in the House of Lords and I never forget that.
“But I am such a cringing Presbyterian, with just utter, utter sense of not being worthy because there’s so many connotations with rank and title and you know, growing up in Buckhaven to two parents who left school at 15 and grew up in Glasgow housing estates, I feel like I shouldn’t be there.
“I don’t like using the title, it makes me deeply uncomfortable.”
Asked if she felt there should be reform in the Lords, she said: “Reform it? I’ll vote for it. I’ll vote myself out of there.”
Davidson led the Scottish Conservatives for nearly a decade after she was elected in 2011 and saw them claim second-place in the 2016 Scottish Parliament election – the party’s best-ever performance up to that point.
