CASUAL observers of Scottish politics are always encouraged to form a favourable impression of Holyrood’s way of getting stuff done. From the outset a chummy narrative was conveyed about our Scottish parliament in which lambs would lie down with lions and swords would be beaten into ploughshares. The committee structure would hold ministers to a higher level of account than is evident in the Westminster Speakeasy; motives and finances would be scrutinised more intensely and the activities of lobbyists and special interest groups would, in time, be clipped. Business hours would be family-friendly as a means of discouraging the late-night drinking culture and the delinquency that follows it in the UK parliament. If Holyrood were to have its own coat of arms a unicorn and a baby-box would feature prominently. It is the home-help of all parliaments.

Supporting this bowl-of-cherries outlook the personal inter-actions of the party leaders seem to be conducted in an atmosphere of mutual and cordial respect. Look, there’s Nicola and Ruth and Kezia all tweeting each other to meet up in the First Minister’s office to cheer on Andy Murray at Wimbledon. And, ha-ha, there’s everyone poking good-natured fun at hapless Willie Rennie and his animal selfies. Everyone seems to be singing: “Here we go again, happy as can be, all good friends and jolly good company.”

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Why, they even formulate a suite of boutique policies which most of them can all gather round and wring their hands over: assisted suicide; minimum pricing; Named Persons and smacking. None of them, of course, involve having to make risky guarantees about real issues such as the attainment gap in education, health inequality and a lack of affordable housing. They are risk-free and impervious to the reality of most people’s lives.

This was all fine and dandy so long as the Tories remained on the margins of Scottish politics with no prospect of getting their greasy mitts on the levers of power. You can afford to be indulgent – affectionate, even – about the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party when you know they’ll never have a chance to put their scrofulous ideas into practice.

That was before Ms Davidson really got into her stride as leader. Soon, she had her party sweeping aside Scottish Labour into second place in the polls. The cult of Ruth duly followed in which even normally cautious commentators fell over themselves in the rush to acclaim Ms Davidson as the saviour of the Scottish Tories and, by jove, as First Minister-in-waiting and potential successor to Theresa May. In this she was portrayed as everyone’s favourite big sister who gets all her badges in the Girl Guides; babysits for next door and takes bible classes at Sunday school.

Lost in the tumult to acclaim the redoubtable and canny Ms Davidson was that she only ever had one major policy and only one slogan: no independence for Scotland and the SNP are divisive. Also overlooked – mainly because it didn’t fit easily into the moonbeams narrative – was that, as a Tory, Ms Davidson remained resolutely supportive of the callous tactics of the Department of Work and Pensions and of her Westminster superiors’ one-sided austerity measures. In the midst of this she remained silent about the annual tax advantages granted to the UK’s richest families and the two-child benefit cap. Along with the hostile environment legislation which fuelled the persecution of the Windrush generation, the Rape Clause has come to epitomise the fundamental inhumanity at the core of modern Conservatism.

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We operate in a democracy, though, and as such if the Tories didn’t exist we would probably have to invent them. If they served no other purpose than to represent the darker side of human behaviour and the baser instincts to which we are all subject then they remain a necessary part of the political process. Indeed, if you were being generous, you might even concede that the Scottish version of them, apart from some of the gargoyles which occupy their back benches at Holyrood, are a semi-house-trained bunch. As the main opposition party at Holyrood they also have a duty to scrutinise and question the policy agenda of the government of the day or, in the case of the SNP, the government of the age. Thus, the return of Ms Davidson to the front line of politics following the birth of her son, was keenly awaited.

Regrettably, those six months away do not appear to have broadened her political focus. Nor has it provided any grounds to be optimistic that the party she leads in Scotland will be making life uncomfortable for the Government. She departed to have her baby while yelling about the dangers of independence and pledging to oppose a second referendum. Six months later she is still obsessing about the referendum.

While Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard in the debating chamber continues to come across like a schoolboy trying to get served in a pub it’s vital that someone responsible is present to test the Government’s record on health and education. As well as this some serious questions require to be asked about why the SNP’s flagship social security reforms are already being undermined by civil service incompetence and a breezy attitude to cost control. For the next two years, if Ms Davidson’s recent round of lickspittle interviews are a signifier, all we will get from the Tories is the same old fare: there must be no second referendum and the SNP are very naughty for continuing to insist on one.

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In Ms Davidson’s absence even his most implacable critics must concede that Jackson Carlaw has deputised well in the Holyrood debating chamber. He has adroitly deflected questions over Brexit and exhibited a degree of statesmanship over his response to the accusations of misconduct about Ross Thomson. As one seasoned political editor put it to me this week: “He certainly didn’t crash the bus despite some rocky terrain.”

There is no shortage of indolent and intellectual lightweights among the Tory backbenches at Holyrood but there are a handful of smart operators in Ms Davidson’s shadow cabinet. If she can’t ditch her obsession with independence then she may find herself spending more time with her young family sooner than she might have expected.

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