Feeling sorry for new Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross
In some ways I feel sorry for Douglas Ross MP, who has just been confirmed as the new Scottish Conservative leader. Firstly, I feel sorry for the way in which his brain’s chemistry releases endorphins when he votes to deny gay people equality or talks about harassing the Travelling community. Not to mention that It can’t be very nice to realise that you have been identified by others as a human ventriloquist dummy. His superiors in Downing Street have done just that with the decision to remove the poorly performing Jackson Carlaw as leader of the Scottish Conservatives and attempt to appoint Ross.
I also feel sorry, in a way, because he has been identified as the dupe to do all the admin while Ruth Davidson gets the alleged “glory” of being the frontbench spokesperson for Downing Street in Holyrood. One can be forgiven for assuming that Ruth Davidson may only have agreed to a return to front-line politics if someone else does the donkey work. Now Ross knows he will be dripping in ermine with a free ride in the House of Lords at some point down the road like other ex-leaders. So, the request/order to step into the position of branch administrator in Scotland might not have been a tough one for him to resist. However, it would not surprise me if there was some initial reluctance on Ross’s part.
He has left Holyrood for Westminster and enjoys the trappings and glamour. For Ross, that is what it is all about. He didn’t turn up to vote in the Commons because the glamour was at the Nou Camp that day as an assistant referee. I find it difficult to imagine that Ross will have been eager to turn in his Westminster lanyard for a Holyrood one again. He will also face having to shake off the tag that he is Westminster’s, Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings’s man in Scotland. First chance he got, he shot off down to Westminster and that will be a jibe thrown out at him should he be elected as an MSP in 2021.
Ross plans to keep his Westminster seat, and so he will face calls of not being focused on the job at Holyrood, and having his head still turned by the trappings of London. We know he is drawn to the glamour tie, so could he resist having someone deputise at Holyrood while he was off rubbing shoulders in the Westminster tea rooms?
Finally, I just feel sorry for him that he has been made the answer to the question of how to save the Scottish Tories from decimation at next year’s Holyrood election. If he doesn’t boost the Tories in the polls and then suffers the kind of heavy defeat currently suggested, then his unremarkable political career will be over. The conspiracy theorists amongst us may think that making Ross leader in Scotland is a sadistic Machiavellian revenge for resigning in protest at Dominic Cummings’s lockdown breach. If his career goes down the tubes will the Cummings cabal shed a tear? If he does well, they win. If he fails, they have another who stepped out of line punished.
At the end of the day, this move by Tory HQ in London is a sign of deep concern and nervousness at the heart of the Unionist camp. Carlaw was the Scottish members’ choice to take on the SNP and the pro-independence camp, yet the leadership in Downing Street have second guessed their own grassroots in Scotland and have moved to install their own man in Scotland. This move is rife with potential pitfalls. Dismissing your Scottish members and telling then who their leader will be is such low-hanging fruit for independence campaigners who will take great pleasure in reminding every Scottish Tory who voted for Carlaw of just how little faith the bosses in London value their opinion.