I’ll be on #bbcgms on @BBCRadioScot just after 7 to discuss @Jackson_Carlaw. Ahead of that, a short thread

I’ve known Jackson for about 20 years. I like him, a lot. He’s an engaging and endearing person. He understands @ScotTories , he understands politics, he thinks, he analyses, he’s clever. But none of it matters. This job is undoable. It is a graveyard for the good.

If @ScotTories think putting someone else in charge will measurably change any of this, they haven’t been paying attention. This is not about the leader; the problem is the party. The coverage this morning indicating otherwise is unfair on Jackson.

Lots of Tories will tell me today that I’ve got it wrong, and they have a plan, and it’ll all be ok. I’ve had these lectures a lot in the past. It gets wearing, and I can’t help but ask them: if you’re so damn smart, why do you keep losing?

The @ScotTories need to decide what they want to achieve. Naively, perhaps, I’m of the view that the point of being the leader of the opposition is to follow it by forming a government. Does anyone seriously think a Scottish Tory leader will ever be FM?

Scotland is the global leader in centre-right failure; in no other democracy I can think of does the party of the centre-right have no chance of ever winning.

Canada shows us the way. The Assemblée Nationale du Québec is run by anti-independence party (no relationship to Ottawa’s Tories), with Liberals (no relationship to Trudeau) 2nd and the Parti Québécois (no relationship to BQ) 3rd. Alberta is more of a flight risk than Quebec.

Whomever gets the @ScotTories job will be faced with the same fundamental questions. If they come up with the same answers, it’ll be a different actor, in the same movie, with the same ending.