[19][20][21][22] On 24 March, Andrew Fulton, the Chairman of the Scottish Conservatives, decided that Macaskill was to be deselected, thereby promoting Davidson to the first position in the Glasgow regional list.

He had been filmed trying to burn a European Union flag in a Glasgow street following a University Conservative Association (GUCA) St Andrew's Day dinner in November 2010.

[29] On 5 October 2011, the Scottish Conservative media director Ramsay Jones was suspended from his duties during the leadership contest, after it was revealed that he had met Davidson and her campaign team in her flat on Sunday, 18 September.

At her first electoral test at the 2012 local elections the Scottish Conservatives lost seats, leading to some worry and talk of a leadership coup in party circles.

She made what he called a "prolonged and embarrassing climb-down" from a pledge to oppose any further devolution of powers to the Scottish parliament and struggled in parliamentary debates with Alex Salmond.

[6] David Torrance wrote that after a year in office Davidson "had little to show in terms of policy development, strategic direction or opinion polls".

[28] Telegraph columnist Alan Cochrane was deeply critical writing in his diary at the time that:She [Davidson] is totally and utterly useless and so are her team.

These potential swing voters had "a generally positive view" of Davidson remembering things about her, such as an incident when she had been asked for ID to drink alcohol at an event.

[43][44][45] On 21 June 2016, she participated in the BBC's Wembley Arena Debate, as a panellist for the "Remain" campaign with Frances O'Grady and Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.

[47] Ian Leslie argues that "Davidson achieved something that nobody else did: she made the case for Remain sound thrillingly righteous" and that her performance led to observers outside of Scotland seeing her as a major figure in British politics.

[6] Commentator Martin Kettle wrote that David Cameron was making plans to move Davidson to the UK Parliament if he had won the referendum in order to position her as his successor.

[48] The referendum saw 52% of British voters decide to leave the European Union, while 62% of the Scottish electorate who cast their vote backed remaining in the EU.

[47] Political commentator Stephen Bush argued that the aftermath of the Scottish independence referendum gave Davidson an opportunity to position herself and her party as the "loudest defender of the Union".

[61] At the 2017 local elections, the Scottish Conservatives achieved their best results since devolution, gaining 164 seats including some surprise successes in working class neighbourhoods such as Calton in Glasgow’s East End and Ferguslie Park in Paisley (the UK's most deprived ward).

[64][65] The British General Election of 2017 notes that 'Had the [Conservative] party increased its vote share [in Scotland] only by the same amount as it did in England and Wales, it would have had just two Scottish seats rather than 13.'

[66] She also made comments on the Brexit process, advocating British withdrawal from the Common Fisheries Policy and opposing a hard border in the Irish Sea.

[79] In the 2021 Scottish Parliament election, Davidson featured heavily on her party's campaign literature, reportedly because she remained popular with "floating unionist voters".

[82] In other statements, she has criticised reductions of troop numbers in the British Army[83] and a UK government scheme to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.

David Patrick argued that Davidson was effective in using photo opportunities, magazine profiles and less serious sections of the news media[f] to cultivate her image.

[96][97][98] Following Jeremy Corbyn's second internal leadership victory in 2016, she wrote an opinion piece for the Times promising to build a "moderate Scottish Conservative party that appeals to the same people who supported Brown and Blair".

Ian Leslie wrote in a 2016 profile of Davidson that her ideals are "profoundly conservative" arguing that she is a "British patriot, a churchgoer, a passionate supporter of the armed forces, an advocate for marriage, a believer in self-reliance".

[103] In 2018, Ruth Davidson said in an interview that she would support a legal challenge in the Supreme Court on the basis of the Scottish Parliament voting to protect what it argued were its existing powers over Brexit.

She praised the assistance provided by foreign aid in general citing the examples of child immunisation programmes, landmine clearance and female education.

[105] In 2020, she criticised Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak's decision to decrease the amount the UK promised to spend on foreign aid from 0.7% to 0.5% of national income.

[106] After King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia died in January 2015, the UK government decided to hang British flags at half-mast as a sign of mourning.

In response, Davidson tweeted: "Flying flags at half-mast on government buildings for the death of a Saudi king is a steaming pile of nonsense.

This tweet was in the context of recent outrage caused by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia publicly beheading a woman and sentencing a blogger to 1,000 lashes.

[112] In 2018, she wrote an opinion piece arguing that early release was being used too often in the Scottish justice system and that the victims of crimes should be allowed to attend parole board hearings.

[116] At a campaign event for the 2022 local elections, she criticised what she saw as incendiary language in the debate around trans rights saying that "gotcha questions about who is a woman, who is a man, I'm not sure that helps".

"[125] In her memoirs, published in 2018 and serialised by The Sunday Times Magazine, Davidson writes of struggling with mental health issues as a teenager, something that she says was triggered by the suicide of a boy in her village.