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.

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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.

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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