What a difference a day, or 12 hours, makes in politics.

We have seen Boris Johnson issue a public apology and admit he attended a lockdown-busting, and potentially law-breaking, gathering in his own garden, claiming he believed he was at a work meeting.

Several MPs have publicly called for his resignation.

The charge for him to quit has been led mostly by the Scottish Conservatives, with Douglas Ross (reluctantly) sticking by his previous comments that if the PM was at the garden party he should quit.

He was quickly backed by several former and current Scottish Conservative MSPs, who said they agreed with his calls. Around half of the party's 31 MSPs are reported to be in support of the resignation demands.

Douglas Ross may have overplayed his hand when he called for the Prime Minister to quit. He admitted as much when he told reporters yesterday that he did not want to be in the position to call for his party leader to go, but he felt he had to.

Despite generating headlines up and down the country, Mr Ross has also attracted harsh criticism from within his party and the row has somewhat overshadowed the events of May 20, 2020.

Cynics may see the whole thing as a ploy to distract from Boris Johnson’s misdemeanours and the massive public outcry when he admitted attending the event in the Downing Street garden, along with dozens of his staff, when the country was under very strict distancing rules.

Others suggest it is an attempt by Mr Ross to make the Scottish Conservatives more appealing to their own electorate, given the PM is chronically unpopular north of the border.

Regardless, one thing is clear – the demand for the PM to go by Douglas Ross, and Jacob Rees-Mogg’s description of the Scottish Tory leader as a “lightweight figure” has blown up the Tory party and taken the focus away from Mr Johnson.

In Holyrood, Mr Ross even garnered some sympathy from Nicola Sturgeon who said the SNP were not even as critical of him as his own party were being.

Conveniently for him, Mr Johnson is also staying out of the public eye for the next week, we are told, due to a member of his household testing positive for coronavirus yesterday.

Again the PM appears not to be playing by the same rules as everyone else here. Many people have described how they have had to go out to work and leave their Covid-stricken partner at home after the government removed the need for self-isolation for those who are vaccinated, even when they come into contact with someone with the virus.

Whatever the reason for Mr Johnson’s sudden shyness, it is only to his benefit that he lays low for a few days and allows the rest of his party to eat themselves and distract from his own shortcomings.

The more the internal row rages on inside the Conservatives and the more heated it gets, the less attention is paid to the Prime Minister and the news cycle moves on. That, of course, is what he hopes will happen so he can cling on to his job. And he may, until Sue Gray hits ‘send’ on her report and a raft of fresh resignation calls are made.