Boris Johnson has dropped plans to visit Scotland to campaign for the Conservatives before the May elections, heightening suspicions the party fears he will damage efforts to lure anti-independence voters away from Scottish Labour. Douglas Ross, the leader of the Scottish Tories, admitted that the prime minister would not be going to Scotland despite Johnson’s assertion in January that “wild horses” would not keep him from campaigning to save the union. In a clear indication that the party fears Johnson’s poor ratings in Scotland would prove toxic to that strategy, Ross told reporters after his Holyrood manifesto launch on Monday that the pair had spoken the night before, agreeing Johnson would not come to Scotland. Allegra Stratton, the prime minister’s spokesperson, blamed the move on Covid, saying: “The pandemic is making these visits more challenging than they would be otherwise.” However, Johnson has made multiple campaign visits to English target seats, including Hartlepool, and visited Scotland in January when Covid infection rates were much higher, and travel restrictions tighter. The Scottish Tories are pledging to spend billions of pounds on tackling low attainment and food poverty in deprived schools, and on NHS funding, as they try to draw the support of anti-independence voters away from Scottish Labour. Ross said only his party was totally focused on blocking Nicola Sturgeon from staging a second independence referendum. He accused Keir Starmer, the UK Labour leader, and the party’s Scottish leader, Anas Sarwar, of being “unwilling and unable to stand up to the nationalists”. Urging unionist voters to abandon Labour and instead back the Tories with their second, list votes, Ross said: “If pro-UK voters unite behind the Scottish Conservatives, then we can stop an SNP majority. We’ve done it before. So, let’s now come together in the national interest.” Support for the Scottish Tories has slumped to around 22% since Johnson became UK leader. The party is betting heavily on a pro-union strategy and will be eyeing up Orange Order and Protestant voters in former industrial areas of Glasgow, Fife and central Scotland who previously voted Labour. In a clear pitch to blue-collar voters, the Tory manifesto pledges: £4.9bn in extra NHS funding by 2025-26 and £600m extra this year for operations and treatments cancelled due to the Covid pandemic. £1bn to close the attainment gap between wealthier and poorer schools, £1.2bn for free school meals, and £550m to hire 3,000 new teachers by 2026. To cut Scotland’s higher income tax rates to the same as England’s by 2026, if the economy allows. £2.5bn to make homes and workplaces energy-efficient and 60,000 new affordable homes. Despite making fighting independence central to the Tory campaign, Ross repeatedly refused to state whether he agreed that a majority of pro-independence MSPs at Holyrood would give Sturgeon a mandate to request a new referendum. “I’m not going to predict the outcome of an election when we’ve still got two and a bit weeks to go,” he said. The polls suggest that pro-independence SNP and Scottish Green MSPs, potentially bolstered by one or two MSPs from Alex Salmond’s new Alba party, will dominate Holyrood. There are signs that Downing Street is now softening its previously resolute opposition to a new referendum. The polling company Ipsos Mori found that 51% of voters across the UK believed Sturgeon should be allowed to stage a fresh referendum if the SNP wins a majority on its own account in May. Even so, the yes vote in Scotland has fallen back, to come neck-and-neck with no.