Analysis: The Downing Street parties that Douglas Ross denounced are widening a fissure between Holyrood’s and Westminster’s Tories
“Trust has been broken.” “A line has been crossed.” “The prime minister’s position is no longer tenable.” While Conservative MPs have largely nursed their anger privately at the barrage of lockdown-busting party revelations from Downing Street, their Scottish MSP counterparts were blunt and unbridled last week, calling for Boris Johnson to quit in a rebellion that was as unprecedented as it was united.
Almost all the 31 Scottish Tory MSPs publicly supported their leader, Douglas Ross, after he became the first senior Tory figure to “regretfully” call for Johnson’s departure, following the prime minister’s admission at PMQs last Wednesday that he had attended a party at Downing Street in May 2020 which contravened his government’s own lockdown rules.
