THE National is delighted to say that the Wee Ginger Dug is back and biting. This is the first of Paul Kavanagh’s new Thursday columns and in The Sunday National Paul will tell us about his recovery...

DOUGLAS Ross, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, is the Forres Gimp of Scottish politics. He may be lacking in such qualities as empathy and human decency, not to mention basic self-awareness, but no-one could ever accuse him of lacking a brass neck.

Douglas is the kind of guy who would piss through your letter box and then chap on your door to ask you how far it went. The Telegraph published an article penned by Douglas, or rather by his press officer, which set out in nauseatingly fake blokeish terms how fitba’-loving Douglas and his Scottish Tories are completely behind the footballer Marcus Rashford’s campaign to ensure that children who live in food poverty receive free school meals during the holidays.

By “completely behind” he means his Scottish Tories voting against the measure when it came to a vote in the Commons – as five of the six did, with Douglas himself skipping the vote, then adding for good measure that the Scottish Tories wouldn’t take part in any vote on the matter in future. This is a very odd definition of “completely behind”, but what do you expect from a party that trashed the Scotland Act and then called it strengthening devolution?

The Tories are now deep into Trumpian levels of lying which, let’s face it, is the only way a hungry wean is ever going to get a pork pie from Douglas Ross and the Scottish Conservatives.

I have been suffering from nausea since I had my stroke and Douglas’s fitba’ metaphor-laden “I’m a dad” shtick almost made me lose my stomach lining. If only Douglas can keep up this level of boak-inducing bollocks he could solve the food poverty problems completely because everyone who has the misfortune to read his stuff and nonsense will be far too nauseous to eat.

Douglas’s claim to support free school meals is about as convincing as the BBC’s claim to be impartial on the topic of Scottish independence. The BBC seemingly wants us to believe that the reason it hasn’t confronted Douglas over his hypocrisy is because he has just popped out to fry up some fish fingers and chips for the weans.

The Scottish Government has already committed to free school meals during the Christmas, February and Easter holidays, as well as the additional Scotchild payment but Douglas tells us he’s going to pressure the Scottish Government to do something that it is already doing which he didn’t do himself despite claiming that he fully supported it. The truth is that the only thing that Douglas fully supports is desperately lunging at any passing bandwagon in what now appears to be the increasingly vain hope that he can avoid the fate of his predecessor, Surname Surname.

Douglas now says that he abstained on the free school meals vote because it’s an England-only issue, although had it been approved it would have produced a Barnett consequential and delivered extra funding for Holyrood which the Scottish Government could have spent on free school meals for kids in Scotland. The kids that Douglas’s party has voted to deprive of school meals might not be able to smell any dinners but they can certainly smell all the shite that passes for his excuses.