Douglas Ross is determined to overcome illness to attend Boris Johnson’s speech at the Scottish Tory conference on Friday over fears his absence would be viewed as a snub to the Prime Minister.

Sources close to the Scottish Tory leader – who has a severe throat infection – said he was concerned that failing to attend would be wrongly perceived as evidence of a split with Boris Johnson.

Mr Ross was the first senior Conservative to urge Mr Johnson to quit over ‘Partygate’ but last week withdrew his letter to the 1922 committee calling for a vote of no confidence, saying that the Prime Minister deserved his support during the Ukraine crisis.

The Telegraph disclosed on Thursday that the Scottish Tory leader had lost his voice following a throat infection, leaving him in a race against time to recover and deliver his keynote conference speech on Saturday.

Mr Ross missed Thursday’s First Minister’s Questions after the party announced his throat had “seized up” and his conference speech had been shortened to take account of his illness.

The conference handbook said the P&J Live venue for the gathering had a strict policy that anyone with symptoms “relating to Covid-19” should “not attend under any circumstance”.

But the Scottish Tories emphasised they were not taking any chances and Mr Ross had none of the symptoms associated with Covid such as a fever, continuous cough or loss of taste or smell.

His spokesman said the virus was not Covid and he was taking antibiotics to help his recovery.

Unfortunate timing

The timing of his illness is extremely unfortunate for Mr Ross as Saturday’s keynote speech to the conference will be his first as party leader to an in-person rather than virtual event.

Friday’s address by Mr Johnson is also his first in-person speech to a Scottish Tory conference as Prime Minister. Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, will address the event virtually.

In January Mr Ross became the first senior Tory to publicly demand that the Prime Minister quit after Mr Johnson failed to convince him in a phone call about why he attended a Downing Street garden party during lockdown.

Although he has withdrawn his demand in light of the Ukraine crisis, and insisted there was never a “personal rift between us”, he has refused to back Mr Johnson to lead the Tories into the next general election.