She’s back: and Ruth Davidson could be the one person who can save the Tories | Martin Kettle

The Scottish Conservative leader returns to the frontline today – and she’s still one of the party’s most popular politicians

The 2015 general election belongs to a different political universe from the Brexit-dominated one we now inhabit. Yet it is only four years since David Cameron, in the middle of the election campaign and on the verge of winning an outright Conservative majority, announced he would not be leading his party in what was then expected to be the 2020 contest.

If Cameron had won the Brexit referendum in 2016, this summer of 2019 would have been his swansong. The Tory party would have been preparing to choose a new leader to succeed him. We would be awash with Tory leadership speculation. Ambitious ministers would be jostling and calculating. The Boris Johnson bandwagon would be rolling. Funny, that. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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