WHY are the Scottish Tories so rubbish? In a democracy it really matters that you have a credible and sensible opposition. In Scotland we are poorly served by the Conservatives who are neither. You would have thought in a national crisis like the coronavirus pandemic, they might rise to the challenge.

Unfortunately, Tory leader Jackson Carlaw and his MSPs prefer to play kindergarten politics rather than be a statesmanlike opposition ready for office. They are obviously unfit for opposition and definitely incapable of government.

This view is widely shared across the electorate and commentariat. This week the anti-SNP columnist Stephen Daisley wrote a piece under the headline: “Wanted: a worthy opponent to Nicola Sturgeon.” After sticking his boot into the Government – as you would expect – he went on to excoriate the opposition: “Never has such a [Scottish] government been blessed with an opposition that daren’t aspire to the dizzying heights of mediocrity.”

This week, when the Scottish Government was making big decisions and the announcement on proceeding to phase two of the roadmap out of the lockdown, we were reminded (again) how second-rate the Scottish Tories are.

After the First Minister Nicola made a carefully judged, detailed and nuanced statement to the Scottish Parliament on the progress we are making as a country in beating the coronavirus and emerging from the lockdown, Jackson Carlaw got the tone and content of his reply all wrong.

While Keir Starmer is still finding his feet at the Westminster dispatch box as an opposition leader, he can already rise to the occasion. Carlaw did the opposite.

Gone is any pretence of responsibility. Rather than stress the primary duty is to keep people safe, the only thing that matters to the Tories is to attack the First Minister and Scottish Government. This led former Labour government minister Malcolm Chisholm to tweet: “All I’ve heard recently is Jackson Carlaw recklessly rejecting public health-led approach and Ruth Davidson gratuitously insulting one of [the] most highly regarded public health experts in Scotland and internationally.”

Davidson had earlier launched an online attack against Devi Sridhar, the respected professor and chair of global public health at Edinburgh University Medical School. The outgoing MSP for Edinburgh Central attacked Professor Sridhar for saying that she and Nicola Sturgeon “are completely aligned and I support her cautious approach to easing lockdown and re-opening schools. She has kids (and teachers, parents) best interest in mind so better to go slowly, track virus closely and make decisions in a reasoned and data-driven way”. Just at a time when we are needing a constructive approach as we emerge from the critical public health phase and into the crucial economic recovery phase, we are left short by the opposition in Scotland.

READ MORE: Vapid sloganeering and faux indignation won’t help the Scottish Tories

Of course, opposition parties must keep the government on its toes, point out shortcomings and make suggestions of better alternatives. That, however, is clearly too much to ask or expect from the Scottish Tories.

This is, after all, the same party that pushed for the resignation of Scotland’s chief medical officer after she travelled from Edinburgh to Fife during lockdown, but stayed silent for days about Dominic Cummings’s trip from London to Durham.

This is the same party that at Westminster has pumped millions of pounds of public money into the business of Dominic Cummings’s Vote Leave pals to develop a failed Track and Trace App.

The project is overseen by the Tory Baroness Dido Harding, who was infamously CEO of TalkTalk when it suffered a major IT hacking scandal. Rather than get their own house in order, or retain any credibility by being consistent, the Tories are all over the place.

Meanwhile the Scottish Government is getting on with the day job, difficult though that is during a pandemic. Public health protection, economic recovery and restoring education as quickly and safely as possible are clearly the major priorities.

Everyone, of all political views, wants a return to normality as soon as risks are reduced. It is too serious, however, to act in haste and repent at leisure. Lives are at stake.

We can take huge encouragement that the number of reported Covid deaths has recently been tracking downwards steadily. In Scotland, the rate has declined to fewer than one coronavirus death per day for every one million people. In England it still sadly running at around three per million.

We can also take huge encouragement from the announcement by the chief medical officers of Scotland, England, Wales, and Northern Ireland that the UK’s coronavirus alert level has been downgraded from level four to level three.

This means that the virus is considered to be “in general circulation” and there can be a “gradual relaxation of restrictions”. Previously the rate of transmission was considered to be “high or rising exponentially”. By acting responsibly and at great cost, the public is beating Covid-19. We should not endanger this progress.