Mandy Rhodes: The so-called Tory dream team that could prove a nightmare for Ruth Davidson

LAST week, it was reported that Scottish Tory leader, Ruth Davidson had banned arch-Brexiteers, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove from attending her party conference in Aberdeen next month – on the grounds they are too toxic.

And while the lady herself denies they were barred, they certainly weren’t invited.

The fact is, in a country that voted overwhelmingly to stay in the EU (62% to 38%) Scots saw through their Brexit lies and Davidson knows this duo of snake oil salesmen would not be appreciated in the Granite City, even by their own party.

Davidson has done a good job of disassociating herself from the more poisonous elements of her party. She has avoided real criticism about the more socially damaging policies emanating from Westminster but, as Theresa May’s government tears itself apart over Europe, Davidson – an ardent remainer – has a difficult balancing act to pull off.

She has set herself apart from hard-line Brexiteers, but it is a farrago.

And with the true cost of leaving the EU now painfully revealed it would be folly for her to offer the red carpet to Brexit cheerleaders who tricked a nation with their braggadocious claims of freedom and, more damagingly, remind Scots which party she actually represents.

With each day we seem to fall deeper and deeper down the Brexit rabbit hole where our new normal is a constantly moving mosaic of madness in which the only thing that is certain is the uncertainty.

On Thursday, MSPs were told they could read the Conservative Government’s Brexit economic impact analysis – papers they were originally told didn’t exist.

But with the details leaked all over the media, the invitation to view – by appointment, under strict supervision and within restricted times – the exercise seemed futile.

And that was before MSPs discovered a “clerical error” which meant they were handed only even-numbered pages.

However, the missing pages couldn’t disguise the reality that under all economic modelling, Scotland would be much poorer following a withdrawal from Europe.

More tellingly, the devastating forecasts mirrored almost exactly figures released by the Scottish Government weeks earlier, and which the Tories had slammed as SNP scaremongering.

So, who to believe?

Enter, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Brexiteer, and a man tipped to be a future PM, who simply dismissed the economics as civil service fiddling. In any other time, the idea of Rees-Mogg as the leader of our country would be dismissed as a joke but he is now the perfect analogy of the chaotic state of politics.

A no-deal Brexiteer whose wrecking-ball approach to a withdrawal from Europe has been exposed as a sham.

An anti-abortionist – even in the case of rape – and against gay marriage. A politician out of step with the modern world who says he is guided by God rather than politics.

And, incredibly, he is tipped to be part of our future – as a Tory leadership “dream team” along with Johnson and Gove. No wonder Davidson isn’t rolling out the welcome mat in Aberdeen.