She was wounded and retired from the British women's exercises, and after entering politics, she was named a baroness and became an honorary colonel of the signal regiment!
Today, we introduce a British military figure, Ruth Elizabeth Davidson, Honorary Colonel of the 32nd Signal Regiment. Ruth was also a lifelong aristocrat in the United Kingdom – The Baroness Davidson of Lundin Links in Lundin Links, Fife, a member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) and a member of the British House of Lords. From this story, we can see a different military life path for a female soldier.
1. Female soldiers have been injured and retired from the army for three years
Born on 10 November 1978 at the Royal Maternity Hospital and the Simpson Memorial Maternity Centre in Edinburgh, Ruth grew up in Selkirk and later went to Fife. Her family lives on Bridgelands Road in Selkirk, and Ruth is in Knowledge Base Elementary School until Grade 3. Her father, Douglas, was a manager at a factory in Laidlaw & Fairgreve, played professional football at Partik as a young man and was a midfielder for Selkirk in the late 1970s and early 1980s. After her father retired from the military and found work in the whiskey industry, the family left the border for Fife, where she attended Buckhaven High School, a state high school.
Ruth studied English Literature at the University of Edinburgh and earned a Master of Arts degree. After graduating, she joined the Glen Rose Gazette as a trainee journalist, later working for Kingdom FM, Real Radio and late 2002 when she joined BBC Scotland as a radio editor, producer, presenter and journalist. In 2009, she left the BBC to study International Development at the University of Glasgow. During that time, she was also a Sunday school teacher.
From 2003 to 2006, Ruth served as a signal soldier in the 32nd Signal Regiment of the British Local Army for three years, and retired after a back injury during a training exercise in Sandhurst. Originally, her military career had come to an abrupt end due to injuries, but after she retired from the military, she embarked on the road of politics through the media industry, and finally wrote a brilliant chapter for her military life.
Westminster candidates and aides
In 2009, Ruth joined the Conservative Party. She was encouraged by the opposition leader David Cameron's call for participation in politics in the wake of the British parliamentary spending scandal. Scottish Conservative Media Director Ramsay Jones encouraged her to join the party and ran in the 2009 North East Glasgow House of Commons by-election. The by-election was sparked by the resignation of Michael Martin, Labour MP and Speaker of the House of Commons, with Ruth in third place with 1,075 votes (5.2 per cent).
In February 2010, Ruth tried to secure a Conservative candidacy for Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, England, and although she made it to the shortlist, she eventually lost to Sajid Javid. From early 2010 to March 2011, she was head of the private office of Scottish Conservative Party leader Annabel Goldie, where she played an important role in organising campaign media events leading up to the 2010 general election and again ran in north-east Glasgow, finishing fourth with 1569 votes (5.3 per cent).
3. Strivers of the Scottish Parliament
In the 2011 Scottish Parliament elections, Ruth was named to the Glasgow Kelvin constituency in September, initially second on the Conservative Party's Glasgow regional list, behind Glasgow businessman Malcolm Macaskill, who is more than 30 years old. But Ruth is unlikely to be elected to the Scottish Parliament, as the Glasgow region usually elects only one conservative member.
However, in March 2011, a newspaper questioned McAskill's business history, revealing that he had not fully disclosed his business career to party members before the 2010 party elections. On 24 March, Scottish Conservative Party Chairman Andrew Fulton decided to disqualify McCaskill and Ruth became number one on the Glasgow regional list. McCaskill supporters then protested back, with some major donors withdrawing their financial support for the party. However, Ruth was able to finish fourth overall in the Kelvin constituency and was elected mp for the Scottish Parliament in the Glasgow region, where Goldie appointed her as Conservative Party's spokesperson for culture, Europe and foreign relations.
In September 2015, police investigated pro-Union activists, including Ruth, into breaching the confidentiality provisions of the Scottish Independence Referendum Act during the Scottish Independence Referendum, before reporting the findings to Scottish Prosecutions. Police Scotland's report said no evidence of a crime had been found and therefore no charges could be brought.
4. Promotion to leader of the Conservative Party in Scotland
On 9 May 2011, Scottish Conservative Leader Annabelle Goldie resigned and Ruth ran for the new leadership election. Her rivals later claimed Ruth had been helped by party headquarters, though her supporters said the claims were just one of many smears. Ruth has three rivals, Merdo Fraser, Jackson Carlo and Margaret Mitchell, and Fraser is trying to secede the Scottish Conservative Party from the United Kingdom and create a new Scottish centre-right party. Ruth announced her candidacy on September 4 and strongly opposed Fraser's proposal to split the party.
Ruth's campaign was supported by Scottish Parliament MPs John Lamont (her campaign manager) and John Scott, as well as the Conservative Party's only Scottish MP and Scottish Secretary of State David Mundell. Some of the Conservative nobles and tycoons also supported Ruth, including Sir Albert Macquarie, the former Conservative President, the 13th Marquis of Lothian, the former Scottish Secretary and President of the Scottish Party, Baron Sanderson, the former Scottish Secretary of State, Baron Forsyth, the Leader of the House of Lords, Baron Strathclyde, and the former Scottish Parliament member and President of the Scottish Parliament and Government, Murray Tosh. Although she is a Member of the Scottish Parliament representing Glasgow, she does not have the support of the President of any of Glasgow's five Conservative Constituency Associations, with more than half of the Scottish Parliament members supporting Merdo Fraser.
On September 11, 2011, Ruth fired her electoral agent and parliamentary aide, Ross McFarlane, after he was photographed trying to burn the EU flag on Glasgow Street after a University Conservative Association (GUCA) dinner on St Andrews Day in November 2010. On 5 October 2011, Scottish Conservative Media Director Ramsey Jones was suspended during the leadership election after he allegedly met Ruth and her campaign at Ruth's apartment on 18 September.
Ruth then won the leadership election and was elected leader of the Scottish Conservative Party on 4 November 2011. Of the 5676 votes, she received 2278 first-priority votes, beating second-placed Merdo Fraser's 2417 votes with 2983 votes in the second-priority count. That sparked some discontent within the party, with prominent party figure Paul McBride resigning and party donor John McGlynn criticizing her election, saying she had been elected through "interference."
When Alex Salmond resigned as chief minister, Davidson nominated himself to succeed him. She knew that the majority of the Scottish National Party actually wanted Nicholas Sturgeon to succeed him as Chief Secretary of State after taking over as Salmond's leader, but she felt the need to come up with "an alternative vision of Scotland". In the end, Ruth lost to Sturgeon by 15 to 66.
In the 2016 elections, the Scottish Conservative Party replaced scottish Labour as the second largest party in the Scottish Parliament and Government, with the Conservatives doubling their seats behind the Scottish National Party. In response to the results of the election, Ruth, who won the vote from the Scottish National Party in Edinburgh's central constituency by 10,399 votes, said: "I don't think all the people who voted for me are genuineLy Tories, and people all over Scotland are no exception, they want us to do a very specific job, which is to hold the Scottish National Party accountable." ”
Following scottish conservative victory in the 2016 Scottish elections, the number of Scottish Parliaments within the party has doubled, with an Article in The Guardian stating that "some in Westminster see her as a potential future leader who can broaden the party's appeal and change the perception that it is on the side of the privileged class". However, in an interview with House magazine, Ruth said the prime minister was "the loneliest job in the world", but she did not rule out the possibility of becoming a member of parliament. In the Conservative Leadership Contest triggered by the resignation of Prime Minister David Cameron, Ruth supported Home Secretary Theresa May to succeed him as Conservative Leader and Prime Minister, saying "Theresa May is best suited to sail in the storms of the future". Ruth was appointed to the Privy Council on 13 July 2016.
In the 2017 local elections, the Scottish Conservatives won 164 seats, unexpectedly succeeding in worker communities such as Carlton in Glasgow's East End and Fergusley Park in Paisley( britain's poorest district). In the 2017 general election, the Conservatives won 13 seats in Scotland, the best record since 1983. In an election that conservatives elsewhere deemed unsuccessful, commentators linked the Conservatives' success in Scotland to Ruth Davidson herself. "Indyref2 is dead and it's time to get back to what's important to the people of Scotland, which is to tidy up our schools, grow our economy and look at our public services," Ruth said. ”
In 2018, Ruth ruled out future leadership elections, saying she "values" her mental health too much. On August 29, 2019, Ruth resigned for both political and personal reasons.
5. Was made a lifelong nobleman and baroness
After resigning, Davidson praised Amber Ladd's decision to leave the cabinet for "political sabotage." She also criticized Boris Johnson for suspending 21 Conservative MPs in September 2019, saying he did so to ensure that moderates in the cabinet were replaced by "more submissive conservatives".
In October 2019, Ruth accepted a PR role for lobbying firm Tulchan Communications while retaining her position as a member of the Scottish Parliament, but the job raised potential conflicts of interest and issues with her salary, £50,000 a day, plus her £63,000 a year in mp salary. A week later, she gave up the post after meeting with parliamentary officials, though she insisted there would be no conflict even if she continued to do the job. Ahead of the 2019 general election, Ruth said she would swim naked in Loch Ness if the Scottish National Party won 50 seats, but the Scottish National Party only won 48 seats.
In July 2020, after Jackson Carlaw resigned in response to pressure from back-seat MPs to support Scottish independence because of declining Support for the Scottish Conservative Party, Ruth lobbied Douglas Ross to run for leadership. Later in July, it was reported that she would be awarded a lifetime title of nobility. She agreed to serve as Conservative leader of the Scottish Parliament until the 2021 General Election in the Scottish Parliament, as Ross had not yet been elected to the Scottish Parliament. Ross ran without an opponent and was declared leader five days later.
Ruth entered the House of Lords in July 2021 as Baroness Davidson of Lunding Links, Fife County, and on October 22, 2021 she gave her first speech in support of Baroness Meacher's Hospice Act.
Sixth, marrying the same sex is happy to have a noble son
On February 18, 2015, Davidson appeared on a live party election with her same-sex partner, Jen Wilson, who came to Wexfordshire, Ireland, at the age of 33. In May 2016, Davidson announced his engagement to Wilson. On April 26, 2018, Davidson announced that she was pregnant after undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF), and she and Wilson were "excited" to look forward to their first child. On 26 October, Davidson gave birth to a baby boy at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh (it is legal for a woman born to a british same-sex partner). Although she already had a son, the title of lifelong nobleman could not be hereditary, and she could only hold the title of baron for the rest of her life, so the boy was not her heir.
In a 2015 interview with BBC Radio Scotland, Ruth Davidson spoke of her sexuality: "In fact, it took years before I admitted it to myself, let alone to anyone else. But sometimes you have to make the decision to either spend the rest of your life in a lie or believe in yourself, and I have to do that. In a 2018 memoir published in Sunday Times magazine, Davidson wrote that she had mental health problems as a teenager caused by the suicide of a boy in her village.
Ruth Davidson is a member of the Church of Scotland whose hobbies include dog walking, mountain climbing and taekwondo, and she supports Soviet Premier League team Dunfermline Athletic. On 23 October 2015, Ruth became the first Scottish female politician to sit on the BBC's satirical news quiz programme I Have News for You.
Davidson was named to Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People of the Year 2018. Although she is not a high-value beauty, it is completely inferior to the heroine Ruth in "Titanic", but her photos can still be seen after beauty treatment.
7. Reaching the peak of his military career as an honorary colonel
In 2017, Ruth Davidson became the Honorary Colonel of the 32nd Signal Regiment she served, reaching the pinnacle of a career in the military that the average female soldier could not reach in a lifetime. You know, queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom served as an honorary military officer in the british regiments, but also an honorary colonel.
The story is coming to an end, and it should be noted that there are many ways for a soldier to reach the pinnacle of his military career, one to be promoted to the rank of active general (or marshal), and to become an honorary colonel like Ruth Davidson is another, and it is no worse than the former.