BORIS Johnson didn't do much to dispel his reputation for laziness yesterday, as he launched the Scottish Tory manifesto in Fife. He read out, almost word for word, the speech he gave in Sheffield on Sunday. Even the jokes were the same: "Corbyn: he used to be indecisive, now he's not so sure". The PM hadn't bothered to mug up Tory city deals in Scotland, and during questions had to phone a friend, in the shape of the Scottish Secretary, Alister Jack. Every now and then Mr Johnson vaguely remembered where he was and railed against the Corbyn-Sturgeon "nightmare on Downing Street", while wagging the Scottish Tory Manifesto, "No2Indyref2".
The surprising thing, perhaps, was that he was there at all. The Prime Minister is almost as unpopular in Scotland as Jeremy Corbyn, who side-stepped Scottish Labour's manifesto launch. Mr Johnson currently scores a rating of minus 34. "Well, that's something we can build on", he said, gamely at the press conference. Perhaps– then again perhaps not
The former London Mayor seems to embody everything Scottish voters loathe about the English public school elite. After he won the leadership just over 100 days ago many Scottish Tory supporters despaired. Those 12 gains in the 2017 election began to look like a brief remission from a terminal illness.
The final nail in the Scottish Tory coffin was banged home in late August, many believed, when Ruth Davidson, their beloved leader, went off to spend more time with her family (and with her new PR consultancy, as it turned out). She had been credited with almost single-handedly making it respectable to vote Tory again in Scotland.
Leaderless, reviled and under the shadow of the mop-haired Bullingdonian, the Scottish Conservatives looked extinction in the face. Quite literally
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