Michael Settle: Don't expect Boris back in Scotland anytime soon

Indeed, the PM was determined matters green would dominate his two-day trip to Scotland and, after meeting local business leaders in Aberdeenshire, he ventured to the Moray Firth to visit a wind farm.

But 10 miles out to sea, while he was on a boat giving a virtual briefing to journalists, Boris’s navigation went awry and his visit hit the rocks.

"Thanks to Margaret Thatcher, who closed so many coal mines across the country, we had a big early start and we're now moving rapidly away from coal altogether," he declared. Laughing, he told the open-mouthed reporters: “I thought that would get you going.”

The Borisbot, which had tried so hard to negotiate the political high-wire focusing on delivering pre-programmed reasonable soundbites, finally succumbed to the inner Boris, whose desire for people - particularly journalists - to find him terribly clever and terribly amusing couldn’t be repressed. The result was indeed terrible.

Gaffe-prone throughout his career, the PM’s latest example had his opponents reaching for microphones and his Conservative colleagues reaching for the smelling salts.

Outrage duly cascaded through the airwaves and on the Twittersphere.

Nicola Sturgeon decried the Conservative leader’s behaviour as “crass and deeply insensitive,” echoed by Mark Drakeford, her counterpart in Wales, who branded the PM’s words “offensive” and noted how the Tories were “still celebrating” how they had devastated mining communities 30 years on.

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Not to be outdone on the condemnation front, Keir Starmer denounced Boris’s verbal blunder as “utterly shameful,” saying it had shown the Tory chief in his true colours; uncaring and out-of-touch with working people.

Anas Sarwar, the Labour leader in Scotland, broadened the attack, saying the PM’s remarks were “just another example of why the Tories are a disaster and the biggest threat to the Union”.

Worryingly for Boris, the most cutting remarks came from the Tories themselves.

One Conservative MP described the party leader’s comments as his “Ratner moment,” a reference to Gerald Ratner, the jewellery business owner, who 30 years ago jokingly described one of his company’s wares as “total crap” and, subsequently, saw the business nearly collapse.

The backbencher told The Times Boris was guilty of “spitting in the face of communities that still haven’t recovered from the miners’ strike”.

Noting how politicians had to share people’s values to get their support, he added: “If you were at the Oxford student union in the 1980s, you might have thought the miners’ strike was all jolly japes. You wouldn’t have understood this left communities in abject poverty. Boris’s success is people think he’s one of them; this shows he’s not.”

Facing such flak, Downing St, was asked if the PM would apologise. It dodged the question.

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While insisting Boris, naturally, recognised the “huge impact and pain” caused to mining communities after their pits closed, it moved quickly on to stress how the UK Government’s “ambitious plan “ to tackle climate change involved cutting back on the reliance on coal.

The big problem not just for Boris but his party too is that his latest masterpiece of miscalculation covers not just Scotland but also Wales and England, where, because of voter numbers, general elections are won and lost.

Surveys have already suggested the Conservatives are losing ground in blue wall seats in the Home Counties as witnessed in the recent Chesham by-election.

A Lib-Lab pact, on which seats to fight, looks certain given the huge electoral mountain Starmer has to climb to get into No 10.

As the Tory lead over Labour begins to crumble so too is Boris’s own personal rating, falling in one poll to -20; compared to say, Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who’s enjoying a score of +10. A recent Conservative Home snapshot showed the PM’s approval rating had fallen 36% to just +3.

If Boris’s Thatcher gaffe was not enough to cloud his latest Scotland trip, it later transpired he was refusing to self-isolate after a No 10 aide apparently tested positive for Covid and was self-isolating. The PM carried on with his two-day Scottish tour regardless.

While a source claimed the Downing Street staffer and the PM were "side by side" on several occasions, including at the police training college, and even flew together in a small plane from Glasgow to Aberdeen, No 10 insisted Boris had “not come into close contact" with anyone, who had tested positive for the virus.

While doubled-jabbed, he would still have to self-isolate for several days; the rule relaxing the need for such action doesn’t come into force for another nine days.

Last month, the PM tried to wriggle out of self-isolating after Sajid Javid, England’s Health Secretary, tested positive with Downing St insisting he was part of a pilot scheme that allowed him to avoid self-isolation. It was only after a public outcry Boris insisted that, of course, he would self-isolate; he did so at Chequers.

Given there is a battle royal ahead on the constitution, the Minister for the Union will need to tread carefully, particularly on matters Scottish, if he is to avoid becoming the Minister for the End of the Union; no matter how many Union flags there are fluttering over our heads.

Don’t expect Boris to be back in Scotland any time soon.

It was suggested yesterday that last year during his brief holiday near the Isle of Skye, our ebullient premier went paddle-boarding but got into trouble, resulting in his protection officers swimming out to save him. When asked if he would be holidaying again in Scotland this year, he supposedly replied: “Over my dead body.”

Nicola, Keir and Anas will be heartbroken.