THE end of Ruth Davidson’s eight-year reign as Scottish Tory leader has clearly dented her party’s electoral prospects and exposed a weak flank in the Union.

But it has also broken the taboo around an idea that made her leader in the first place, sparking a debate about her party’s ties to the one led by Boris Johnson.

In 2011, as a newly elected Glasgow MSP with two failed attempts to become an MP behind her, Ms Davidson started as a 10/1 outsider in the contest to succeed Annabel Goldie.

READ MORE: Mark Smith: Five positives about Ruth Davidson we can all agree on

However, she won with the support – some explicit, some behind the scenes – of the UK party establishment, who saw her as the best person to block the favourite, the then deputy leader Murdo Fraser. Mr Fraser’s crime was to propose dissolving the Scottish Conservatives after decades of electoral decline and start over as a new centre-right party without the baggage.

It would be a sister to the UK party, with its MPs taking the Conservative whip at Westminster, but would be wholly independent from Conservative central office.

At the time, Mr Fraser argued the Scottish Tories who had just lost two of their 17 MSPs in the Holyrood election in which the SNP had won a majority, essentially had nothing to lose

He said: “There is no future for the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party in its current form. It is, without exaggeration, adapt or die. It’s time to try something different, a bold new direction … [We] will build a new movement to bring back the thousands of people who have left us over the years.”

It was not a fringe proposal.

READ MORE: Rebecca McQuillan: The Scottish Tories need to cut the UK party adrift

Mr Fraser was backed by most Tory MSPs, MEP Struan Stevenson, former Scottish leader David McLetchie and the former Scottish secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind.

But the new prime minister, David Cameron, wasn’t having it and gave Ms Davidson a quiet push.

Her campaign became driven by a promise to knock the idea on the head. Scotland’s biggest Tory donor, the normally publicity-shy Sir Jack Harvie, broke cover to declare he wouldn’t work with any new party.

Scotland’s only Tory MP at the time, David Mundell, also backed Ms Davidson. As her victory was a mandate to maintain the status quo, it shut down all debate on the idea.

However her exit means it is now being looked at anew.

Glasgow MSP Adam Tomkins, the party’s constitution spokesman, yesterday said it was time for the Scottish party to look again at its relationship with the UK party, and that he expected the issue to be a central part of the coming leadership contest. He told The Herald: &ldquI want that conversation to happen.

“For me, the more important question is not who is leader, but what it is we are seeking to lead here.

“We all know that Ruth ruled out, for the duration of her leadership, any prospect of there being any kind of different relationship with the UK party.

“But I think those things should be back on the table.”

He said that with politics in a state of flux, the party had to be open to new ideas, and that he personally was open to reviving Mr Fraser’s idea.

“I think it would be a mistake not to talk about it.”

The party of the Union splitting to survive?

The ripples from Ms Davidson’s resignation have only started.