SO the Scottish Conservatives are back to being … well, the Scottish Conservatives. Thanks to Ruth Davidson, they’ve been – no, not cool or trendy, never remotely that – but just a bit less Tory. That was always her gift: to change the projector image in our heads of a Conservative from a ruddy-faced, tweedy retired colonel to a short, tiggerish, cropped-headed lesbian. Urban, not rural; young, not old; fun, not disapproving, superficially at least.

Being a stooge for Boris Johnson didn’t suit Ruth at all. Now she’s gone, that ignominy will pass to her successor, whoever that benighted soul might be.

Because the Scottish Conservatives are in deep trouble. Anyone seeking the leadership now will have to justify the jaw-dropping actions of Boris Johnson, and how do they do that? An unelected prime minister who lacks a workable parliamentary majority is trying to force through a policy he knows will damage lives and livelihoods – a policy that no one voted for – by gagging our elected representatives.

How do you defend that in a country that voted overwhelmingly to remain and is showing signs of preferring the idea of independence than staying yoked to his derided government?

READ MORE: Mark Smith: Five positives about Ruth Davidson we can all agree on 

It doesn’t help that the accompanying deceitfulness of the UK Cabinet has been as base as the act itself. If hypocrisy were a competitive event, self-styled defender of democracy Jacob Rees-Mogg would be Team GB’s greatest hope, with his brazen insistence that suspending parliament for 23 working days at such a critical time was nothing at all to do with cutting parliament out of the Brexit debate.

Liar liar, coat-tails on fire. Mooning from the windows of Conservative Central Office would have shown less contempt for voters.

There is no coming back from this for any politician who tries to defend it.

Ms Davidson did not name Johnson as a reason for leaving (doing so would have put her successor in an intolerable position), making only a passing reference to “the conflict I have felt over Brexit” but the timing was potent. There’s the right side of history and the wrong side, and Ruth Davidson could see where she was headed. Polling already showed the Tories would suffer for having Johnson as leader. After he suspended parliament, how could she find the motivation to defend it?

There is another problem for the Scottish Tories: the vulnerability of Davidson’s legacy. Not the party’s anti-independence cred – no-one seriously questions that – but in broadening their appeal.

READ MORE: Ruth Davidson confirms her resignation as Scottish Conservative leader 

Don’t let the presence of Sajid Javid fool you: this is the most privileged UK cabinet for a generation. Of the 33 ministers who attend it, 22 are privately educated (Scottish Secretary Alister Jack among them), four went to Eton and 15 to Oxbridge. “An Eton coup” is how Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie aptly describes the proroguing of parliament, and he’s right. Mr Johnson is the second Etonian Prime Minister in less than four years (the other having complacently unleashed this chaos on the nation) and his Cabinet symbolises the stranglehold the class system still has on British life. It’s a very different look from the one embodied by Davidson and damaging to the brand.

More broadly, her departure marks the collapse of an unprecedented period in British public life when women ruled, many of them recognisable by their first names only: Nicola, Kezia, Ruth, Theresa, Leanne, Arlene, Caroline. Not any more. Ruth Davidson retreats citing the toll frontline politics has taken on her family and friends; ditto Kezia Dugdale, the former Scottish Labour leader. Theresa May has been ousted, Leanne Wood replaced. Jo Swinson joins Sturgeon and Lucas to face the massed ranks of Brexiteers who now treat British democracy as their plaything. It’s hard to see this as progress.

So what happens next? Tory MSP Murdo Fraser’s idea of creating a separate, independent Scottish Conservative party free to criticise the UK management, has to be worth dusting off. Yes, separation might seem perverse for a unionist party; yes, the resulting MPs might suffer from split loyalties if their leader were a Scottish MSP while their career prospects depended on the UK Conservative leader, but wouldn’t it be less uncomfortable than playing the apologist when Boris Johnson flirted with the tactics of a tinpot dictator? Surely flagellating yourself with a Vote Leave lanyard would be less uncomfortable than that.

If it seems a drastic option, then that’s just the zeitgeist. The old-fashioned UK system of government is being tested to breaking point. It needs reform like a desert needs water. If we have a monarch who can be used by an unscrupulous Prime Minister to circumvent parliament, then we should rethink the role of the monarch, or whether we have one at all (we should not, in my view, though it would be wrong to blame the Queen personally for the current guddle).

If the House of Lords can be stuffed with unelected peers by the unelected Prime Minister in order to block the will of our elected representatives (Dominic Cummings’ latest wheeze), then we should be insisting that MPs legislate to get rid of it and replace it.

And if we want a system of government that reflects the will, needs and desires of the population outside the south east of England, then we should start talking seriously to people about the benefits of federal government.

But that is for later, when the far-reaching implications of Brexit and Johnson’s constitutional gerrymandering become clear.

The pressing questions now are whether MPs of six parties will be able to work together outmanoeuvring the most shameless of opponents to prevent no-deal (perhaps), and whether the suspension of parliament is just a ruse by Johnson to make MPs pass a vote of no confidence, precipitating a general election in which he can portray them as opponents of the people (probably). No wonder Ruth Davidson has had enough.

Whoever takes over from her will need “cojones of steel” as Davidson once said of Theresa May, to stand up to Boris Johnson and their Scottish opponents at one and the same time. The alternative is to hand their strings over to Downing Street and let the chief puppeteer do the rest, which would only propel the Tories back into the political wilderness.

It’s not much of a gig. One wonders why anyone would want it.