The National:

A SCOTTISH Tory MSP has made a pretty desperate attempt to defend Rishi Sunak flying in a helicopter from London – by digging up an eight-year old image of Nicola Sturgeon.

Stephen Kerr made the desperate bid to defend his boss after Sunak faced stiff criticism for using a chopper instead of taking a one-hour train journey to Dover.

Mhairi Black, the SNP’s depute leader at Westminster, had taken a shot at the Prime Minister during Wednesday’s PMQs.

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She said: “This Government plans to cut taxes for the richest, spend £6 billion in imprisoning people fleeing war and persecution, and has lost £21bn to Government fraud throughout this pandemic.

“Is the view from the Prime Minister’s luxury helicopters so skewed that during a cost-of-living crisis he thinks this is what people’s priorities are?”

Drawing false equivalence – a key weapon in the Tories’ arsenal – Kerr responded to the criticism by digging up a picture of former first minister Nicola Sturgeon from, err, 2015.

In it, Sturgeon is shown stepping out of a helicopter while on the General Election campaign trail.

The key difference here is that the SNP leader was using party funds – while Sunak’s luxury flights are paid for by an unwilling taxpayer.

But since Kerr has brought up that 2015 General Election campaign, let’s have a look at some figures from back then.

Reports from the Electoral Commission at the time said that the SNP spent £35,450 on helicopter flights in the final week of the election battle (which saw them win 56 of the 59 Scottish seats).

That’s around half of the £70,000 that the Tories were forced to cough up in fines after missing £104,765 out of their spending records.

But that’s all pittance when compared to the £50 million in taxpayer funding the Tories are spending on a fancy new helicopter to shuttle them about.

Odds are Kerr won’t be complaining about that anytime soon.