THE Tory Party is at war.
More and more Scottish Conservatives are calling on Boris Johnson to step down by the minute.
Letters of no confidence in the Prime Minister have reportedly already been sent to the 1922 backbench committee - with 54 needed to trigger a leadership challenge.
Douglas Ross, the Scottish Tory leader, has said he will send a letter of his own - and has publicly called for Johnson to stand down.
Ross, the MP for Moray, said that Johnson’s position is “no longer tenable”.
He has been joined in calling for the PM to go by a raft of his MSPs, including Murdo Fraser, Annie Wells, and Jackson Carlaw.
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However, in a show of true humility, the Scottish Tory leader also conceded that those calls are likely to have no effect...
Now, in fresh friendly fire among the Conservatives’ upper echelons, Michael Gove seems to have lent some credence to Ross’s dim view of his own influence.
Asked about the Scottish Tory leader’s call for Johnson to go, Gove was flippant.
The minister for levelling up said: “My instant response is he's in Elgin and the national Tory leader is in London.”
As if Scots needed any further confirmation that the bigwigs down in Westminster take little to no notice of their views...
The Scottish Tories might have been hoping for some good publicity out of finally growing a backbone and standing up to their bosses.
Unfortunately though, things seem to have backfired a little.
It's not only Michael Gove taking potshots at the party - the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg also got in on the act.
"Scottish Tories are not a big group", she told her 1.3 million followers.
this is really interesting - Scottish Tories are not a big group, but if the party there is in open revolt like this, how could they back the PM at the next election, and how can he make the case for the Union https://t.co/vrkdeNrOn9
— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) January 12, 2022
That will come as some shock to Ross's party, who haven't tired of telling us how much of a success winning 31 MSPs was last year.
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