BORIS Johnson will not meet with Nicola Sturgeon at Bute House on his first official trip to Scotland as Prime Minister because he doesn’t want to look like a “visiting foreign dignitary”.
The Eton-educated toff who’s all but certain to be unveiled as the new leader of the Tories on Tuesday, is reportedly due to travel up from London within days of getting the keys to Number 10.
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That’s despite a new poll revealing that 62% of Scots don’t trust him.
The YouGov survey for Best for Britain revealed that the figure across the UK as a whole was 58%, but jumped four points when just Scots were asked. It also revealed that a third of all Tory voters found it tricky to trust him.
The former Foreign Secretary met with the Scottish Tory MP group on Wednesday in a bid to reassure them he would “lead from the front” on the Union.
But a Johnson campaign insider told the Daily Mail that there would be no photoshoot on the steps of Bute House, as Theresa May had done on her first official visit to Edinburgh, less than 48 hours after taking office.
The paper’s source said: “It looks like a visiting foreign dignitary, when he is the Prime Minister of the UK.”
The source suggested Johnson would arrange a separate engagement along the lines of a gathering of the Joint Ministerial Committee.
Johnson met 11 of the 13 Scottish Tory MPs in London on Wednesday. Scottish Secretary David Mundell is understood to have been in attendance as rumours intensify that he will seek to keep his cabinet position.
One of the MPs at the meeting, who had previously opposed Johnson’s leadership told the Mail: “Everyone accepts what the outcome is going to be next Tuesday, so colleagues are very keen to continue the positive engagement there has been throughout the campaign. He assured us of the importance in leading from the front of the Union and of setting up a Union unit, which needs to be rolled out simultaneously.
“He also pledged he would fulfil all the commitments he gave during the campaign.”
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Scottish Labour MP and Best for Britain supporter Ian Murray said the Scottish Tory support for Johnson was shameful.
“The majority of people in Scotland and right across the UK believe Boris Johnson cannot be trusted.
“After printing lies on the side of a bus during the EU referendum, and throwing our ambassador to the US under a bus, he has lost all credibility.
“More than a third of Tory voters don’t trust their next leader, yet Scottish Conservative MPs have shamefully vowed to unite behind him.”
Meanwhile, Gordon Brown has said Johnson could be the last Prime Minister of the UK.
The former Labour leader, who launched his own pro-Unionist think tank yesterday, said the SNP would be able to campaign on “Boris and Brexit” which could see the 300-year-old union “bite the dust”.
Brown also said Scottish independence would be an “even worse financial catastrophe” for Scotland than a no-deal Brexit.”
He criticised the response of both administrations to the devastating statistics published earlier his week revealing that there were 1187 drug-related deaths in Scotland last year.
Brown wrote: “Nothing illustrates the sterility of this head-to-head confrontation than when in the wake of news of Scotland having the worst and most deadly drugs problem in Europe, SNP and Conservatives simply blamed each other.
“There should have been a call for joint action to end a crisis that is needlessly destroying thousands of lives.”
A spokeswoman for the SNP said: “The prospect of a Boris Johnson-led Brexit Britain illustrates exactly why Scotland needs independence.
“People in Scotland don’t think Labour can stand up to the Tories - and the increasingly irrelevant interventions by Gordon Brown are doing nothing to change that.”
Meanwhile, Johnson’s claim at the last Tory leadership hustings that regulations imposed by “Brussels bureaucrats” are damaging the kipper trade are not true.
He claimed the EU insisted each kipper sold “be accompanied by a plastic ice pillow.” However, that regulation is entirely British.
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