A friend of mine had a marvellously barbed description of a once senior Scottish Labour politician.

On their first encounter, this now demoted apparatchik seemed articulate and switched on, a silver tongue and a sound mind in a good suit. But repeated encounters wore off his lacquer and his polish.

Terrible emptiness replaced his initial plausibility. “He shrinks on you,” my friend quipped.

This Labour man looks certain to return to the Scottish parliament next week, but he isn’t the only figure to emerge shrunken from this Holyrood race. Under the microscope of the campaign, Ruth Davidson has shrunk on me considerably. For all the hype, this campaign has revealed the Scottish Tory leader to be a devastatingly shallow and politically unserious politician.

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