THE Scottish Tories are about to find out that Boris Johnson was not their problem. Not that they will do anything about it. But it needs said anyway.

Rishi Sunak v Liz Truss is not the choice I wanted. However, under the Conservative party’s leadership rules, no one has any say other than the MPs until the options have been reduced to two. No peer, no matter how lofty. No grandee, no matter how high they once rose. No man in a grey suit. And certainly no mere MSP.

Nobody gets a say other than the MPs themselves and even they do not have to declare for anyone. Worse, even those who do declare may not actually vote in line with what they say, “lending” votes to another in order to knock out someone else. It’s inelegant. It's messy. And it’s given us a rotten choice.

Even if Sunak v Truss was long predicted as the likely outcome, it was never the run-off the Scottish party wanted. Quite a few in the Scottish party wanted Penny Mordaunt in the final two. Quite a few wanted (even if they knew they were never going to get) Tom Tugendhat. And quite a few were as impressed as I was by the rise and rise of the brilliant Kemi Badenoch.

But last week, in three successive days, each of these was grimly knocked out by the MPs, in favour of Sunak and Truss. What a dismal, disappointing result that has been. All of the ideas were coming from Mordaunt, Tugendhat and Badenoch. Yes, some of those ideas were a bit nuts. Yes, some of the them were under-cooked. There was a lot of raw inexperience on display but also, for the first time in a long time, there was real energy and commitment.

To have such novices knocked out by real political heavyweights would be one thing (and entirely understandable). But to have all three knocked out by cardboard candidates as weak and flimsy as Sunak and Truss is dispiriting.

The problem with Sunak is that he would be just so easy for the opposition to demonise. He is so smooth – and, yes, so unbelievably wealthy – that it is always going to be difficult for him to connect on a human level with those “hard-working families” of political cliché who really will be struggling this autumn and winter with ever rising costs.

He’s right that the prudent thing to do on the economy is to ensure that the public finances are on a sound footing before offering tax cuts (or, indeed, other giveaways). But is he the right messenger for that tough message, given his inordinate personal wealth? I wish it were otherwise, but the question answers itself.

Truss is right that Sunak’s Treasury has been disgracefully slow to develop a meaningful plan for growth. But she is wrong to imagine that tax cuts now amounts to anything close to a plan for growth. Sunak is right that such a ploy will be both inflationary and lead to higher interest rates. But party members don’t want to listen to long-term prudence, they want short-term electoral fixes (and bugger the consequences) – and that, precisely, is what Truss is offering them.

The core of the problem with Truss is that she does not know her own mind. Political ambition has so eaten away at her that there is nothing of substance left. Despite being a former Remainer (indeed, she is a former Lib Dem!), she is preferred by the right wing of the Tory party because they think they will be able to run and control her. She will be a puppet prime minister, on strings pulled by the most wild-eyed of the lunatic fringe. I hope to God I’m wrong.

Regardless, we are going to find out soon enough. Truss will win this thing and my sense is that she’ll be awful, surrounding herself and populating her Cabinet not with the brightest and best of the parliamentary party, but with the people who have thrust her up to high office and to whom she will be beholden.

I think the Scottish party leadership knows all of this, which is why they are doing their damnedest to sit this one out, not to say anything, to back neither candidate, and to hope no one notices. They are mindful of the mistakes of Johnson’s rise to the top, which was publicly opposed not only by the then Scottish leader Ruth Davidson, but by all her closest colleagues, including the Secretary of State David Mundell and her deputy Jackson Carlaw. It set in motion three years of mistrust and misalignment between the Scottish party and the UK leadership.

This time around there is far more Scottish support for Sunak than there is for Truss, but the former has been deliberately muted, as an insurance policy to be cashed out when Truss beats him to No 10. It won’t work, for three reasons.

First, Truss will know she was not supported by the Scottish party leadership, even if their support for Sunak remains hushed for now.

Second, Truss will lack a team in Scotland who can sell and deliver her message to a sceptical voting public.

And third, the problem for the Tories in Scotland is not the leader – it never has been. It’s the party itself that is the problem.

There will be a huge sigh of relief when Johnson finally goes, but it will be misplaced. The centre-right in Scotland is doomed to eternal opposition for as long as its politicians continue to cleave to the Conservative party as their vehicle of choice. It’s not the driver that needs changed: it’s the very party itself.

It isn’t going to happen, not any time soon. But, until that alters, the fate of the Scottish Tories will be to do exactly as they are doing now: to sit and watch, unable to influence anything, and a million miles from power.

Adam Tomkins was a Conservative MSP for the Glasgow region from 2016 to 2021