I HATE Ruth Davidson. I love Ruth Davidson. Ruth Davidson proves the Tories haven’t changed. Ruth Davidson proves the Tories have changed. Ruth Davidson is a flip-flopper. Ruth Davidson is a woman of principle. Good riddance, Ruth Davidson. We’ll miss you, Ruth Davidson.

I don’t know which side of that particular divide you fall on. You may even be that rare thing in this age of certainty: a person who holds a nuanced opinion and thinks the former leader of the Scottish Conservatives had both good and bad points.

My own view is that there are five things about her that we can all probably agree on. They are the five negatives she has positively proved.

1: Gay is not left wing.

In the 1980s, gay politics was all about the campaigner Peter Tatchell and the pro-Labour Red Wedge movement featuring pop stars like Jimmy Somerville. As Peter shouted and Jimmy sang, an assumption grew that pink was red, queer was Labour, gay was socialist.

Not so. In fact, the gay Tory Ivan Massow once said that, of all the parties, the Conservatives are the gayest and it’s become even more so in recent years. Tory groups have become visible at gay events like Pride. And then up popped Ruth Davidson. She was leader of the Scottish Conservatives and look over there, that’s her girlfriend! It was a profound and welcome change.

2: Scotland is not left-wing.

Another myth Ruth Davidson helped bust. For a long time, there was an idea that Scotland had a distinct set of values and that they were left-of-centre. Partly, it was because Scots voted for Labour in such large numbers for such a long time, but the SNP has continued to promote the idea: Scotland is different, Scotland is radical.

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Nope. Not true. Scotland has broadly similar views to the rest of the UK and there is a strong strand of blue, conservative thought that runs right through it. The bluest bits are Aberdeenshire and the Borders, but Ruth Davidson was, and is, a reminder that many Scots across the country hold conservative views. She also gave them a little more confidence about saying so.

3: Tory is not bad.

For years now, anyone who has criticised the Scottish nationalists has been in danger of having the SNPbad hashtag slapped on them, but there are some who think the same way about the Conservatives. Tories are wrong, Tories are evil. Hashtag: Torybad.

What Ruth Davidson demonstrated is that, in reality, politics is much more subtle than that. Like many, if not most, Conservatives under the age of 50, the Scottish leader was socially liberal and supported policies that would make the old Tory buffers drop their cigars: LGBT rights, gay marriage, pro-immigration, and remaining in the EU of course. On law and order and justice, she was a little more unreconstructed, but on the whole her sensible, progressive and liberal views attracted people who might otherwise have been booing the Tories like everyone else.

4: The SNP is not Scotland

Supporters of independence often conflate two words beginning with S: Scotland and the SNP. They speak about both of them as if they were the same and appear to believe that when Nicola Sturgeon speaks, she speaks for the whole of the country. You want a hashtag? How about #SNPgood?

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Before 2017, this was easier for Scottish nationalists to do. The SNP held 56 of the 59 Westminster constituencies but then came the general election that year. The party lost 21 of its seats. It lost 13 per cent of its vote. Who knows how that might change if the PM holds an election this year, but the Scottish Conservatives’ success in 2017 was largely down to their leader. It could properly be called a surge. It was also a reminder that two words beginning with S don’t necessarily mean the same thing.

5: Politics is not everything

The last, and probably the most important, point to be honest. There are some who doubt Ruth Davidson’s suggestion that her resignation was mainly about personal issues. They say it’s the old spend-more-time-with-my-family routine to hide what’s really going on, which, in Ms Davidson’s case, is profound and unbridgeable disagreements with the man in Number 10.

Obviously, there’s some truth in that – in the end, Ms Davidson’s loyalty to the Conservatives has prevented her from telling us entirely what’s been going on in her head. But the emotion in her voice when she talked about her family and friends was genuine.

It was also a good message for her to end on. Politics is not everything. Sometimes stop is a better choice than go. And this one: when something doesn’t feel right, it’s right to do something else.