THE seeds of the Scottish Tories’ Holyrood election result were sown in a series of campaign meetings last year.

Leader Ruth Davidson, strategist Eddie Barnes and party director Mark McInnes sat down in August to draw up a simple but brutally effective plan.

The trio believed the Tories, for so long the whipping boys of Scottish politics, should contest the Holyrood election with two basic messages.

The first was to position the Conservatives as a party determined to hold the SNP to account and provide a voice to voters fearful of the party's dominance.

The second was to be unambiguously against another independence referendum and call for the SNP to ‘move on’ from the 2014 plebiscite.

A draft slogan - the “Scottish Alternative” - was produced, then dumped, but the overall thinking was constant until May 5.

The net effect on polling day was that voters knew exactly what the Tories stood for and the party got the verdict it wanted delivered.

In 2011, Annabel Goldie limped home with 15 seats and nearly 510,000 votes. Five years later, Davidson more than doubled the number of Conservative MSPs and secured over 1 million votes. Second place was also snatched from Labour.

However, the stripped down message required Davidson to neutralise the main obstacle to progress: her own party, and the toxicity of the Tories in Scotland.

In February, after private polling revealed the leader’s popularity contrasted sharply with the dodgy reputation of her party, Davidson agreed to put her name on the ballot paper.

Hundreds of party leaflets featured jumbo sized pictures of Davidson, but voters needed a microscope to find out she was a candidate for the Conservatives.

Five years ago, Davidson defeated fellow MSP Murdo Fraser for the party crown by arguing against his radical plan to abolish the ‘tainted’ Tories.

By the time of the 2016 election campaign, Fraser’s plan was effectively dusted down as Davidson threw her party under the bus in a bid to de-toxify the Conservative brand.

Another Conservative ‘negative’ – policy – was neutralised by ensuring the manifesto was of secondary importance to standing up to the SNP.

The promise of no income tax rises and opposition to the Named Person scheme were important parts of the Tory campaign, but subservient to the messages agreed in the autumn.

The final handicap – the UK Government – was also addressed head-on by Davidson.

When Chancellor George Osborne backed cuts to tax credits last year, the Scottish Tory leader criticised the plan.

When Osborne announced changes to disability benefits this year, she again distanced herself from the proposals...albeit belatedly.

As the campaign got underway, Davidson ensured that neither the Chancellor nor the Prime Minister came anywhere near Scotland.

Another pre-election move offered a further contrast between Davidson and her Labour counterpart Kezia Dugdale.

Both leaders had wanted to rid their parties of time-serving MSPS, but only Davidson – through allies - managed to persuade sitting members to retire and usher in new blood.

Forty-eight hours before election day, with opinion polls suggesting second place was within grasp of the Tories, a senior party insider told this newspaper that the regional Lists were key and constituencies a bonus.

In the end, the party’s success on first-past-the-post was enough to set the scene for a stunning evening for the Tories - at least in relative terms given the recent history of the party in Scotland, and the distaste many voters have for Conservative politics.

The Tories held their seats in the Borders and South of Scotland and took Eastwood and Dumfriesshire from Labour, while Davidson and Alexander Burnett won constituencies from the SNP.

The regional Lists also produced extraordinary results, such as the Tories winning two List seats in Glasgow and three in Central, both of which have been unhappy hunting grounds for the Conservative Party for decades.

A senior party source admitted the strategy of talking up second place had been risky.

At the 2015 general election, Davidson had vowed to increase the party’s vote share, but ended up presiding over its worst result since 1965.

Even making progress at the Holyrood election, while narrowly failing to beat Labour, would have resulted in Davidson looking foolish.

As one party MSP said: “The margins between success and failure looked to be tight. Nobody expected Ruth would knock it out of the park.”