Douglas Ross to resign as leader of Scottish Conservatives

[Emrys]

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He will carry on in the role until after the election and will also resign as an MSP if he is re-elected to Westminster.

It follows a row over Mr Ross standing as a candidate for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East instead of David Duguid, who has been in hospital and was in effect de-selected.
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Mr Ross also came under pressure at the weekend when the Sunday Mail reported that his own advisers had raised concerns over 28 parliamentary travel claims which may have been combined with his work as a football linesman.

He said the expenses claims were approved by the independent parliamentary body IPSA and he would have "no issue" with the expenses being examined for a second time.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ceddenl8xz4o

Mixed feelings here, as Ross has long been a liability for the Scottish Tories for a variety of reasons. These include a poisonously unattractive public persona, his juggling three jobs (as a professional assistant football referee, an MP and an MSP, while doubling as Scottish Tory leader) and doing none of them well, arrant hypocrisy and screeching U-turns as he's sought to ingratiate himself with a sorry succession of UK Tory leaders, and his cloddish, utterly juvenile misbehaviour during proceedings at the Holyrood parliament.

I could write far more about his personal character and haplessness as a politician than I suspect anyone here's attention span might cope with (grimly amusing as much of it is), so I'll let co-leader of the Scottish Greens Patrick Harvie reflect general sentiments about the asshole:



To sum up, Ross's hold on his party in Scotland has long seemed very tenuous. By shoving aside an unwell relatively popular Tory MP (who was intent on standing and is expected to make a full discovery) so that Ross could take over the candidacy for what has been a relatively "safe" seat for the Tories, depriving the previous MP of a redundancy payoff if the seat had been lost, but rendering Ross eligible to collect it if he crashes and burns, he royally pissed off party workers to such an extent that they revealed 28 allegedly fraudulent expense claims as an MP for travel necessary for his assistant referee duties, this on top of an existing rumbling scandal over some £30,000 of income from his refereeing that he failed to declare for tax (one of his various excuses being that he thought he didn't need to declare it because he'd donated it to charity - not a grasp of tax laws you'd hope to see from a party leader).

If any of this stirs a glimmer of sympathy, save it for a more deserving candidate - Ross has been at the forefront of calling for various resignations at the drop of a hat ever since he elbowed the previous Scottish Tory leader aside and jumped into his shoes.

The visuals couldn't be much worse for Tory spin doctors to try to knit into their Scottish campaign. If successful at the election, he's chosen to retain his seat as an MP (no doubt because it pays better than an MSP and gives him more scope for arselicking his way up the party career ladder, having reached the top rung in Scotland) and ditch his commitment to Holyrood. If he loses as an MP, his Holyrood seat seems to be seen as a consolation prize, and a poor second at that.

[Emrys]

1. Things go from better to better ...

Tory candidate set to replace Douglas Ross as MSP lives in London

DOUGLAS Ross is set to be replaced as an MSP for the Highlands and Islands by a London-based executive whose six-figure salary from the charity her mother founded was recently the focus of a watchdog's investigation, The National can reveal.
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If Ross resigns from the Scottish Parliament, he would be replaced by the next candidate on the Tories' Highlands and Islands regional list from the 2021 Holyrood elections: Ella Robertson McKay (below).
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Robertson McKay is the daughter of Kate Robertson, the co-founder of the charity One Young World, which works with high-profile celebrities to develop young people’s leadership skills.

Robertson McKay is employed as the managing director of the London-based charity, and according to her LinkedIn and other social media activity, she is also based in the city.

In October 2022, the Charity Commission opened an investigation into One Young World amid concerns linked to “senior staff salaries and bonuses paid”.

https://www.thenational.scot/news/24377807.tory-candidate-set-replace-douglas-ross-msp-lives-london/

The scottish Tories are not alone in parachuting in candidates in Scotland from way down south for the general election, Labour having also excited disapproval by doing the same. At least Robertson McKay has dabbled in Scottish politics before now, having campaigned here for the Tories during the 2021 Holyrood elections.

However, coming potentially pre-disgraced, but guaranteed a seat if things pan out badly for Ross given how the electoral list system works under our version of proportional representation, she'd no doubt be an illustrious addition to the Tories' ranks at Holyrood.

For some reason, having made many breathless news cycles of lurid headlines out of various SNP "scandals", TV media's coverage in Scotland of the Scottish Tories' current sordid travails has so far been muted. Whether that can be sustained given the outcry (and gloating) I've been seeing on social media remains to be seen.