David Cameron looks set to snub his own star-studded St Andrew's Day celebration in Downing Street later today.
The Prime Minister has invited a host of Scottish celebrities to the patron saints day's celebrations at No 10, where food will be prepared by Michelin starred chef Tom Kitchin to mark "the contribution Scotland makes to the United Kingdom".
Comedian Kevin Bridges and chef Nick Nairn are boycotting the event and Wimbledon champion Andy Murray is likely to be missing as he continues his post-season recovery in Miami.
But now it has emerged that Mr Cameron himself is also due to miss the reception.
The celebration clashes with an informal working dinner with other EU leaders at the Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Mr Cameron plans to use the dinner to set out his concerns about the free movement within the EU and call for a debate on the issue. The St Andrew's Day event is designed to celebrate the "sung and unsung heroes" of Scotland.
Mr Kitchin, the owner of The Kitchin in Edinburgh, was the youngest-ever winner of a Michelin star when he was aged 29.
Mr Kitchin recently tweeted a picture of himself in Downing Street with the message: "Just popped into No 10 to discuss an exciting Scottish event coming up soon."
Last night a No 10 source admitted it was "possible" that Mr Cameron would miss his event.
Mr Nairn explained his decision not to attend the event by accusing the Prime Minister of "cynicism" over the event, which falls two days after the Scottish Government unveiled its White Paper on independence.
"When I first got the invitation, I thought, 'That's nice, it will be a good evening and I ought to go.'" he said.
"But I got to thinking, 'Is this just a cynical ploy by a government conducting a hearts and minds campaign?' There is a whiff of cynicism about it and I resent being manipulated. I am a stubborn Scot, after all."
Mr Bridges used more colourful language earlier this year when he posted a picture of his invitation to his 644,000 Twitter followers.
At the time a Downing Street spokesman said: "We have invited a lot of people from across Scottish society and it is up to each person to decide if they want to come or not."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article