Not content with being a referee and leader of the Tories in Scotland, Douglas Ross seems bent on making himself even more unpopular with the punters. In doing so, he has alighted upon David Duguid, the Conservative MP for Banff and Buchan since 2017, who wrestled that once true-blue redoubt back from the SNP after 30 years of Nationalist incumbency.
Duguid, who served as a minister under Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, was preparing to stand again, under his seat’s new name of Aberdeenshire North and Moray East, when he was struck by illness and spent four weeks in intensive care. He says he’s on the road to recovery and though he wouldn’t be able to go door-to-door before polling day, he expected to be the Conservative candidate, not least because local Conservative members had endorsed him as such.
On Wednesday evening, however, the men in grey kilts came for him. Right on the cusp of nominations closing, meaning he had no chance to mount a fightback, he was informed by Scottish Tory higher-ups that he was being dropped as a candidate. As luck would have it, they had come up with a replacement. One Douglas Ross, apparently a real up-and-comer in Scottish Tory politics.
In addition to being a Conservative MSP (and a football linesman), Ross is the outgoing MP for Moray. He announced three years ago that he wouldn’t be standing in the 2024 election and, until this morning, had given no indication that he had changed his mind. Indeed, he was said to be leaving the Commons to focus on the next Holyrood election and his job as leader of the Scottish Conservatives. The man has so many jobs it’s a wonder he can focus on any of them.
Perhaps Duguid had to be removed as a candidate for his own good and that of his party. Local Tory voters will be able to understand that. What they will struggle with is why he had to be defenestrated so coldly, at the very last minute, with no softening of the ground to prepare for it. They will struggle with the notion that, at a moment of great personal difficulty for one of his MPs, the Scottish Conservative leader not only reversed his position on standing again but somehow obtained selection for that MP’s seat. A seat that borders Ross’s own, which boundary changes have turned into a notional SNP seat.
Like I say, maybe this messiness was unavoidable but it looks bad and it smells bad. Elsewhere on Coffee House, Iain Macwhirter notes that Holyrood polling points to a return to third place for the Scottish Tories after 2026 and posits that Ross is hedging his bets. He might feel he has more to contribute as part of a rump Commons Tory party, where he could feasibly help shape what if any future the Conservatives have, than he could as head of the third party in a regional parliament where opposition parties have even less influence than they have at Westminster.
All this might be true, but I can’t help but think this sort of skulduggery won’t go down well in Banffshire, which is far from Edinburgh and London not just in miles but in values. People up that way prize honesty, plain-dealing, and loyalty. Even those who feel Duguid should have stood aside of his own volition will recoil from the sight of him getting a dagger in the back from his own colleagues. Whether that will cost Ross enough votes for him to lose the seat is another matter, but with a notional majority of just over 2,000, it’s one hell of a risk to take.
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