The National:

RUTH Davidson’s got a high horse and she is happy to climb on it.

Writing in her column for the Mail on Sunday, the soon-to-be-Baroness has launched an all-out assault on Dominic Cummings.

She calls him a “political firestarter” that no leader should invite into the annals of power.

The former Scottish Tory leader said she thought Boris Johnson was “crazy” to defend Cummings after he drove to Barnard Castle to “test his eyesight” mid-lockdown.

She says the Prime Minister’s former special adviser had “doused in gasoline and set on fire” the UK’s public health messaging at a crucial time.

In her column, Davidson pans Cummings’s presentation of himself as an “enlightened prophet” and says she doubts “very much” his version of the events in Downing Street during the opening months of the Covid pandemic.

It’s odd that she would express such doubts now, one year after the Barnard Castle scandal broke.

It’s especially odd given how quiet she was on the topic at the time.

The National: Dominic Cummings at a victory rally with Tory supporters in Westminster

As the Jouker pointed out in May 2020, Davidson was silent on Cummings’s lockdown breaking trip despite making several media appearances on other topics.

When the Scottish Tories finally did break their silence on the scandal through then leader Jackson Carlaw, they simply said the Prime Minister had “reached a conclusion” and that we should all listen to it and move on.

Nothing more to see here. No “doubts” on Davidson’s part.

So why, a year on, has Davidson changed her tune? Why is she attacking Cummings now?

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Could it be that her bosses in Westminster told her to keep quiet and defend the Prime Minister’s favourite in 2020, but now allegiances have switched she’s been told to go on the attack?

Could it be that Douglas Ross’s haunting silence on the Australian trade deal, despite promising to be “on the frontline” defending Scots farmers, is due to a similar “keep quiet” order handed down from London?

As SNP depute leader Keith Brown told the Jouker, “Baroness Davidson has form on trading in her principles when it suits her”.

The National: Keith Brown summed up his overall economic aim as being 'inclusive growth' when speaking at Holyrood this week

Brown (above) went on: “She changed her tune on Brexit when she was offered a seat in the unelected House of Lords, and this time it's no different. The former Scottish Tory party leader was missing in action when her boss's right-hand man undermined public health guidance and risked lives.

"The people of Scotland will see right through this feigned outrage.

“The Scottish Tories have repeatedly followed in the footsteps of their Westminster bosses and failed to stand up for Scotland at every turn. That isn't about to change."