The Conservatives won their lowest share of the vote in Scotland since 1965 at the election – but their leader there, Ruth Davidson, is still tipped as a successor to Cameron. From her eye-catching photo ops to her gloriously unspun talk, her charm is winning her plenty of fans, and not just Tory ones

When Ruth Davidson was 10 years old, a friend’s mum told her that John Major had just been made prime minister. Confused by this news, she asked, “Can a man even be the prime minister?” The outlandish possibility had never occurred to her, she explains, laughing. “Because all my life, it had been the queen and Margaret Thatcher in charge.”

This charming little anecdote serves so many purposes that if I hadn’t heard Davidson tell it herself, I might suspect a clever spin doctor had made it up. In a country where Thatcher’s memory is still toxic, it conveys the absurdity of holding someone who was in nappies when Thatcher took office responsible for her legacy today. “If I’m honest,” the Scottish Tory leader points out with a faintly sarcastic grin, “I wasn’t all that political at primary school.” It also allows Davidson to disown Thatcherism without criticising or apologising for it. Most ingeniously of all, it reminds everyone in Scotland who still hates Thatcher that her premiership did as much or more for the feminist cause than any women’s campaign today.

If symbolism matters in politics, Davidson knows how to make the most of it. The 36-year-old former journalist is a working-class Glaswegian lesbian who joined her party only six years ago, and shares Nicola Sturgeon’s gift for appearing to be a normal human being. Almost every non-Tory I know in Scotland has confided to me that they secretly love her, and it is easy to see why. Warm and informal, brisk but relaxed, she does a very witty impression of the Guardian’s photographer, and makes fun of herself for agreeing to any pose he wants if it will get her in the papers. “When the nation is swooning over other leaders, you sometimes have to make more of an effort up here. So I may have been a slight photo tart when it came to the election.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson (right) and her partner, Jen Wilson, riding a steam train in Scotland during the 2015 general election campaign. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian

She tells funny stories about meeting Major recently – “His favourite song at the time was Happy by Pharrell Williams. My heart did slightly melt” – and can “totally see why women would fancy him”, even though “I’m the wrong girl to ask!” Giggling, she goes on, “On the sexy front, when I was a child I didn’t get the Paddy Ashdown revelations [of extramarital affairs]. I thought, how can this man be a player? But then I interviewed him when I was a journalist, and he said,” – she adopts a smooth, James Bondish tone – “‘Oh, just call me Paddy,’ I was like, ‘Ooooh!’” and dissolves into a simpering froth. “Wrong, I know,” she groans, “so wrong.” Then she turns to her press officer and whispers, “Is this the sort of thing you were worried about?” “No, no, just carry on,” he murmurs. “Really?” she double checks. “Are you fine with this?”

Of course he is. In May the Tories recorded their lowest share of the vote in Scotland since the Scottish Conservatives formed in1965. Davidson became leader in 2011; ordinarily, a leader of four years’ standing might expect to take a large share of the blame for such a defeat, but nobody blames her. In the face of the SNP tsunami, most Scots Tories conceded that little could be done but to cling on, and were relieved the party retained its one seat. Some have blamed Downing Street for alienating Scots voters with its anti-SNP alarmism, but Davidson disagrees, and puts her party’s poor result down to tactical voting by Tories desperate to keep the SNP out. “Conservatives in Scotland feel that pro-union sense much more than supporters of other parties, and were far more scared than pro-union people in the rest of the country about what the SNP could wrestle from a weak Labour government. People who had voted ‘no’ in Scotland were very worried – and rightly worried, I think.”

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She predicts that there will be a second independence referendum in Scotland, which she does not want, but will not oppose. “If the SNP puts in its manifesto that it has an intention to hold a second referendum, and if it wins an outright majority, I think it does have a mandate to hold one.” Will she be making that case to Downing Street? “Yeah. Because I actually don’t think, in the longer term, Westminster saying ‘No you cannae’ will play well in Scotland, and I think that it would damage the unionist cause.” The only obstacle she can foresee would be the SNP’s reluctance to risk losing again. “If you have two referenda very close together, if you lose the second one, even by a whisper, then it’s over. I think the SNP would be very mindful of that.” Support for independence would need to be polling at 60%, she thinks, for Sturgeon to risk it.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘I may have been a slight photo tart when it came to the election’ … Ruth Davidson (right) campaigning in Edinburgh in April. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Her respect for the SNP leader is unmistakable. “Nicola is a better politician than Alex Salmond. We’re not buddies or anything like that, but I find her a straighter person to deal with.” Davidson has suffered some spectacularly ugly abuse from nationalists on social media, which she has not hesitated to publicise, but when I ask if the SNP has a bullying problem she becomes conspicuously cautious. “I think it’s probably more about,” and she pauses carefully, “nationalism, than it is about any particular party. Passions get inflamed by nationalism.” When I ask if the Lib Dems’ sole surviving Scottish MP, Alistair Carmichael, should resign for leaking a document with the intention of smearing Sturgeon during the election campaign, she becomes uncharacteristically guarded again.

After a long, uncomfortable pause: “I think that’s one for Alistair. I think it was quite revealing that he said if he was still secretary of state he would have stood down.” That sounds as if she does think he should stand down as an MP? Following another pointed pause, she offers quietly, “I think Alistair will know what he should do. But whether what he’s doing now is the same action I would take, I’m not sure. Sorry, I’m not trying to be infuriating. I just think some of the stuff that’s happened has been pretty unpleasant; I mean, branches of the SNP writing to his church trying to get him kicked out. That’s not what this should be about, and I don’t particularly want to say anything that’s going to stoke the fire, if I’m honest.”

All wariness vanishes the moment we move on to national politics. She names the Labour leadership candidate she would least like to see elected without hesitation: Liz Kendall. “You know,” she adds with a mischievous grin, “I won’t be too unhappy if Andy Burnham gets it. Eyelashes will only take you so far, you know.” Davidson has a standing invitation to attend political cabinet meetings in Westminster, and does so once a month; she is in regular contact with David Cameron, and cites George Osborne and Theresa May as the senior ministers with whom she works most closely.

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When I ask if she thinks Cameron should allow ministers to campaign on either side of the EU referendum, she adopts a studiedly casual tone, as if to feign unawareness of the current fever in Westminster over this question.

“Well, interestingly, I discussed this with my MSP group in Holyrood yesterday. We’re not going to be bound by group responsibility on this one, ’cos this touches people who have long-held beliefs. They would be free to join, should they so wish, one of the two campaigns.” Presumably she therefore thinks the prime minister should adopt the same approach?

“Well, that’s up to the prime minister. But for me, Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, if I was running the government, and the government’s stated position was that we would renegotiate and stay in, I think it would be incompatible for a minister of that government to actively campaign against the government’s position. And they would be recused from their duties in government, yes.

“If you campaign against the government, you should not be a government minister. You cannot campaign against the government you serve, absolutely not. It means that you should leave the government. You have to choose. You have to choose.”

Davidson faces no conflict with Cameron over the EU, and will campaign hard for Britain to remain a member. But he has got it wrong, she says, to deny 16- and 17-year-olds the right to take part in the vote. She made the same mistake herself, she admits, when she opposed the extension of the franchise in the Scottish referendum.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ruth Davidson on the election campaign trail in May. Photograph: Andy Buchanan/AFP/Getty Images

“And I’m happy to hold my hands up and say I changed my mind. I’m a fully paid-up member of the ‘votes at 16’ club now, for every election. I thought 16- and 17-year-olds were fantastic during the referendum campaign. I can’t tell you the number of hustings and public meetings I did, and some of the younger members of the audience were the most informed. You know, there is nothing more terrifying for somebody up on the stage who is trotting off the latest IMF figures to have somebody in the front row with a smartphone googling your answers to make sure that you’ve got it exactly right. That happened, and that is terrifying, let me tell you!” She spoke at a BBC event for youth voters, “and there were eight and a half thousand kids there, asking questions about the Barnett formula! It was phenomenal. It was truly, truly impressive.”

Has she told Cameron he is wrong about the franchise? “Absolutely, absolutely. I’ve spoken to the prime minister about it. He’s not convinced, but I continue to work on him.”

She says this with the confidence of a politician who knows she has the ear of the prime minister. When questioned about potential successors on Woman’s Hour, Cameron surprised everyone by suggesting Davidson. The first she knew of it was when she read the news on Twitter, and affects all the customary bashful astonishment. She has emphatically denied any Westminster ambitions, but although making the Tories electable in Scotland is, as she has pointed out, a big enough challenge to keep anyone busy, I would be very surprised if she is never persuaded to serve her party on a bigger stage.

“When I was a child, the people I wanted to be like existed in books and things.” Her great heroes and heroines were Joan of Arc, Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird, and Sir Thomas More from A Man for All Seasons. “It’s that idea of doing things because they’re hard, knowing that they’re hard, and you know that to not do them, you would feel diminished in yourself.”

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A practising Christian, she has never made any secret of her sexuality, and maintains that it was never an issue for anyone, which would be lovely to believe. She has an Irish partner, Jen Wilson, and would like to correct recent misreports that the couple pledged to get married in Ireland if the country voted to legalise gay marriage. “That is not what I said at all!” she laughs. “We don’t not want to get married. But we haven’t got as far as marriage discussions. We’ve only been together just over a year.”

But she would, she says, like to have children. “I’ve always kind of thought, since I was in my early 20s, that I probably would have children – but in about five years. Now I’m 36, and so I don’t have many five years left. But I’m still in a place where I think kids would be nice in about five years. So I haven’t changed really. But we’re not in a situation where we can just wait and see if nature takes its course.” I ask if she would like to be pregnant. “That’s an enormously personal question!” But it’s one, she acknowledges, “that I’ve thought about. So it is not unexamined.”

Davidson is so good at navigating questions with diplomatic skill while appearing authentically unspun that she is either one of the most refreshingly genuine or ingeniously shrewd politicians I have ever interviewed. As I’m leaving, I ask for her view on the recent court ruling that found that a bakery in Belfast had been guilty of discrimination for refusing to ice a cake with a slogan supporting gay marriage. If her response is a quick-thinking bluff to deflect a sensitive question, she would have to be a tactical genius.

“Errmm,” she hesitates vaguely, before bursting into laughter. “Oh dear, you see they had a similar sort of storyline on an episode of The Good Wife I watched the other day, and now I’m trying desperately to remember which story is which. Sorry, how embarrassing.”

• This article was amended on 12 June 2015 to state that Ruth Davidson is a practising Christian. An earlier version incorrectly described her as a practising Catholic. The article was further amended on 18 and 22 June to correct the spelling of Thomas More and clarify references to the Conservative share of the vote and the document leaked by an aide to Alistair Carmichael.