Boris Johnson pulls the rug on Scottish Tories

The SNP would like voters to believe that the Conservative government in Westminster neither cares nor understands the needs and desires of people in Scotland. The UK government had been planning a major push to try to counter this narrative.

They were hoping to show Scottish voters how much they benefit from being part of the UK so it really doesn't help when Prime Minister Boris Johnson appears to be ignorant of his own party's stance on devolution.

• Boris Johnson 'called Scottish devolution disaster'

His reported comments that devolution has been a "disaster" north of the border sound tone deaf to people of all political persuasions who have come to embrace the Holyrood parliament as the dominant feature of public life in Scotland.

This is especially so at a time when there is furious debate about whether the UK government's Internal Market Bill threatens the powers of the Scottish Parliament.

I think it's fair to say that one has been an argument followed most closely by political anoraks and insiders so far but the PM's remarks will propel the issue into the spotlight. Which is certainly not what he intended to do.

Douglas Ross has been making a splash since he took over the leadership of the Scottish Tory party by being unafraid to disagree with Mr Johnson on Scottish matters. But this must feel like he is having the rug pulled out from under him by his own leader.

Principal opposition

It is true that the Conservative party campaigned against devolution in 1997.

John Major, the Conservative prime minister in the 1990s, dismissed the idea of Scottish Parliament as teenage madness but that has not been the Tory line for more than 20 years.

In fact it was the Scottish Parliament that helped fuel a revival of the Tory party in Scotland where they now act as the principal opposition to the SNP

The Conservatives are implacably opposed to the idea of a second referendum on Scottish independence and say that, even if the SNP win big in the crucial Holyrood elections in less than six months' time, Westminster will refuse to allow another vote.

That would cause an almighty constitutional row.

One way to avoid that clash would be for the Scottish Conservative party to perform well enough in those elections that they deprive the SNP of a majority.

That will not be made any easier after what many Scottish Tories see as Boris Johnson's "disaster".