You thought things couldn’t get worse for the Conservative party in this election? They just did. The Scottish Conservative leader, Douglas Ross, has announced that he is to resign his leadership following yet another alleged scandal concerning a Tory politician.
Few in Ross’s own party can keep up with the twists and turns of his political ambitions
Allegations were reported over the weekend that Mr Ross had used his Westminster expenses to travel around the country performing his side hustle as an assistant referee for the Scottish Football Association. Mr Ross denies acting improperly and insists that he has only ever claimed expenses related to his role as MP. Needless to say, the Scottish opposition parties are sceptical and demanding an investigation.
Any way you look at this, the optics are terrible. Only last week, Mr Ross criticised the SNP First Minister, John Swinney, for defending the former SNP health secretary, Michael Matheson over his 27-day suspension for trying to claim, under his parliamentary expenses, an £11,000 bill for holiday roaming charges. Ross said Matheson should resign his seat in Holyrood. Now the Scottish Tory MSP says he will resign as leader of his party after the general election, though not, he insists, because of any irregularities in his expenses claims but because of his dual role as an MP and MSP.
You really couldn’t make this up. Twenty years ago, the then Scottish Conservative leader, David McLetchie, resigned after it was revealed he had been using his parliamentary expenses to travel to the lawyers office where he worked part time. McLetchie was widely regarded as a highly capable and honourable leader even by opposition MSPs. Mr Ross less so. He was roundly criticised last week, not least by those in his own party, for appearing to have elbowed aside the respected former minister, David Duguid, as the candidate for the Aberdeenshire North and Moray East constituency. Ross told the press that Duguid, who had been MP for the area since 2017, could not stand because he has been hospitalised recently with a spinal injury. Mr Duguid then made clear on social media that he’d been fully expecting to stand and was very much up for the fight. It made Ross look like a heartless carpet bagger.
Brushing aside the expenses row, Ross says he has simply decided it is no longer ‘feasible’ to remain an MSP if he is re-elected to Westminster. Yet, this is not a dual role he has had a problem with performing in the past. The Scottish Tory leader has remained MP for Moray for the last three years since he was elected to Holyrood. This is why Scottish opposition MSPs call him ‘three jobs Ross’: MP, MSP and linesman.
In 2021, the Scottish Tory leader promised to give up his ambitions as an MP in Westminster altogether in order to concentrate on his Holyrood role as leader of the official opposition. Now he is saying the will stand down for good as a Holyrood MSP if he is re-elected as an MP. But, er, not if he loses, in which case he will remain as an MSP but not as Tory party leader. Confused? So are the voters of Aberdeenshire.
Whether he succeeds in this electoral switcheroo must also be in doubt. The Conservatives have much support in this newly-redrawn seat. But the SNP’s candidate, Seamus Logan, thinks Ross is a loser. ‘It’s clear he’s been forced out as Scottish Tory leader’ Logan declared, ‘after his shameful behaviour over David Duguid and his growing expenses scandal. Voters deserve a dedicated MSP – not one who is hedging his bets in case he loses the election.’ The Alba leader, Alex Salmond says it is ‘the first case of a rat deserting the sinking ship while simultaneously trying to clamber aboard a gravy train.’
Few in Ross’s own party can keep up with the twists and turns of their leader’s political ambitions. It remains to be seen whether they will be content with his hedging his electoral bets in this way. Nor will they thank him for making this announcement in the middle of a desperately difficult general election campaign while allegations around his expenses are still fresh in the minds of voters.
Ross is not well known outside Scotland. He enjoyed a brief moment of celebrity when he resigned as a junior minister in Boris Johnson’s administration in May 2020 following Dominic Cummings’s trip to Barnard Castle during Covid. But he has now allowed the opposition to portray him as another reckless ‘Tory chancer’ and further infuriated members of his own party. One of them told the BBC at the weekend that Ross’s conduct over the deselection of David Duguid, went down ‘like a bucket of cold sick’. One suspects No. 10 will find the Scottish Tory leader’s sudden resignation announcement to be similarly unappetising.
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