Ruth Davidson admits self-harming

16 September 2018, 06:31 | Updated: 16 September 2018, 06:36

Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson has ruled out ever taking on the party's top job for the sake of her mental health and relationship.

The 39-year-old, who is pregnant with her first child, told how she had self-harmed and had suicidal thoughts when she was younger.

Ms Davidson's personal popularity and electoral success has seen her frequently tipped as a future leader of the UK party.

But she explicitly ruled out such a move and dismissed claims she could take a peerage or move south and become an MP as "bollocks".

Asked if she would ever run, Ms Davidson told The Sunday Times: "No. I value my relationship and my mental health too much for it. I will not be a candidate."

She added: "On a human level, the idea that I would have a child in Edinburgh and then immediately go down to London four days a week and leave it up here is offensive, actually offensive to me."

In extracts from Ms Davidson's memoirs, printed by the newspaper, she tells how the suicide of a boy from her home village when she was 17 sent her into a "tailspin".

A year later she was diagnosed with clinical depression but the medication gave her "desperate, dark, terrible dreams".

"I started having suicidal thoughts," she wrote.

Ms Davidson said she is "still frightened" of going back to the "psychological place I once inhabited".

She said she turns to "structure, exercise, forward momentum, measurable outcomes" when she is feeling anxious.