The National:

A SCOTTISH Tory MSP has been roundly mocked after claiming that “Unionist parties have won every election in Scotland, year in year out”.

Yes, Sharon Dowey – the Tory who lost out in the constituency vote to the SNP’s Elena Whitham just one year ago – actually did say that.

The Conservative MSP has been accused of committing a “mathematical atrocity” after tweeting against (what else) an independence referendum.

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Highlighting First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s claim that there is an “indisputable democratic mandate” for a second vote, Dowey wrote on Twitter: “This is definitely a position that deserves disputing.

“There's nothing democratic about Nicola Sturgeon foisting her independence obsession on an electorate that has clearly rejected it.

“Unionist parties have won every election in Scotland, year in year out, that's democratic.”

Reader, they haven’t.

In 2021, in the wake of the SNP's decisive Holyrood election victory, Dowey’s Tory colleagues took to claiming that the Unionist vote had actually won the day.

They buried their heads in the sand and pointed to stats that showed that – in the constituency vote alone – slightly more votes went to the pro-Union Tories, Labour, and LibDems than to the pro-independence SNP and Green parties.

Unfortunately, that’s not how elections tend to work (and the Greens barely stood in any constituencies).

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Looking at the list vote – which Dowey should do as that’s how she won a seat in Holyrood – shows that there were more votes for pro-independence parties. Uh-oh.

Totalling the list and constituency votes gives the same outcome – more votes for pro-independence parties.

It would be tedious to list every election result which proves Dowey wrong, so that one will have to suffice.

“Actually howling at this mathematical atrocity,” Green MSP Ross Greer wrote.

“'Unionist parties have won every election in Scotland' - yeah, if you stop counting in 2010.”

While the SNP’s Jim Fairlie added: “I’m really not sure how to respond to this? In what Democratic world is it that the parties who sit in minority seats try to claim they have won the election?

“Yet another desperate attempt to thwart the democratic will of the people of Scotland from the Tories.”

SNP MSP Paul McLennan responded: “This is incredible – there is a pro-indy majority in the Scottish Parliament – by a voting system that was designed by to prevent one.

“Pro-indy MSPs 72 – Pro-Union MSPs 57 – that’s a majority. “Is this a voluntary Union as we are told or not?”

The Scottish Tories have been asked if they have any evidence to back up Dowey’s wild claim. We won’t be holding our breath.