Being a lightweight is sometimes no bad thing. As someone still recovering from a festive infusion of cheese, cured ham, bread and red wine, I envy lightweights.
In politics, however, there is no insult more heinous. When Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the House of Commons and the ultimate Tory establishment figure, used it last week to describe Douglas Ross, the leader of Scotland’s Tories, he knew what he was doing, and knew of the consequences.
To many readers, the eruption of a family feud between the Scottish Tories and their London counterparts, following Ross’s call for Boris Johnson to resign after he admitted to attending a Downing Street drinks party in May 2020, may be novel. It isn’t. It would be better described as an intense heating up of a cold war that has been present, at some level, throughout the entirety of devolution. (But let us be in no doubt about the intensity of the heat – one Conservative MSP said to me about Rees-Mogg: “He’s a complete prick. The sort that makes it embarrassing to say you’re a Tory.”)
