Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Jacob Rees-Mogg is wrong: Douglas Ross is no lightweight

(Photos: Getty)

Douglas Ross is a ‘lightweight’. The head of the Scottish Tories is ‘not a big figure in the Conservative party’. These two assessments were issued on Wednesday evening in separate broadcast appearances by Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Leader of the House and the most biddable boot boy in Westminster.

That Downing Street would be displeased by Ross’s call for the Prime Minister to resign is to be expected. That it licensed Rees-Mogg to trash the Scottish Conservative Party in retaliation says a great deal about the outfit currently running the show. The assertion by a senior minister that a Scottish Tory leader is ‘not a big figure’ in the party has the potential to haunt the Scottish Conservatives the way ‘branch office’ still dogs Scottish Labour.

It is doubtful Rees-Mogg considered the soundbite gift he was handing the SNP. It is doubtful he cares

It is doubtful Rees-Mogg considered the soundbite gift he was handing the SNP. It is doubtful he cares. We can surmise this from his demeanour in the Newsnight studio. His ‘lightweight’ jibe prompted a sputter of disbelief from Kirsty Wark yet the Commons leader was the very picture of composed intent. Ross, the oikish son of a farmer, had gotten uppity with the sons of gentlemen and now an example was being made of him.

Rees-Mogg’s snide contempt for the most senior Tory in Scotland is an object lesson about a certain class in this country and the sort of progeny it turns out. Rees-Mogg was educated at Westminster, Eton and Oxford but no amount of expensive schooling could teach him good manners. In the past 24 hours, Douglas Ross, product of an agricultural college, has carried himself with a decorum his insulter could not hope to match. No one has been elevated by the tawdry sideshow into which Britain’s government has devolved but Ross is one of the few office-holding Tories to stand apart.

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