Why Douglas Ross should remain an MP to save the Union - Alastair Stewart

Devolution was always about romanticism and imagination. Scotland, making her own decisions on her own affairs could form a destiny different but within the family and framework of the UK.

Douglas Ross, new leader of the Scottish Conservative Party. Picture: John Devlin

What few could have predicted is how insular and alien each parliament would become to the other. And with no loss of irony, it’s new Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross’ unconventional parliamentary career that could save the whole thing.

If Ross truly wants to lead from the front, if the Union truly is his priority, then he would remain as an MP.

His plan to return as an MSP in 2021 is doomed to irrelevance. One more Conservative MSP will not make any more difference to the anticipated SNP majority at the next election.

Ross was an MSP between 2016-17 before his election as an MP in 2017. And now wants to go back again. It’s precisely that casual switching of parliaments that gives the entire system a good bill of health. It breaks the binary choice of Westminster or Holyrood and the dreary deadlock of career parliamentarians at one or the other.

We need more imaginatively positioned leadership. Most of the Scottish political parties are wildly disconnected from their larger UK namesakes.

Ross could finally answer that challenge through the example of whether the Scottish Tories dictate to the UK party or vis versa.

By leading the Scottish party from the House of Commons, Ross wouldn’t be fighting from the foothills but at the front.

The SNP rules at Holyrood, but it’s at Westminster where the Union can be saved, and he could ensure the UK government acts with flair, thought and sensitivity to protect it.

For the time being, Ruth Davidson will deputise in his place until 2021. The arrangement is oddly apropos: Lord Salisbury was the last prime minister to lead a government from the House of Lords. Yet it was Alex Douglas-Home who was the final lord to renounce his peerage to join the Commons as prime minister - he also helped damn the Scottish Unionist Party to regionalism by merging it with the UK Conservatives in 1965 in the first place.

Westminster has the power to act with constitutional imagination by the very fact we don’t have a constitution - only precedent and tradition.

Lord Hailsham called the system of executive dominance an ‘elective dictatorship’. If we wanted federalism, or devo-max or any other Union saving measure, then we could have it if there was a majority - just as Brexit was bulldozed through.

By the same token, political parties need to save the Union with some radical out of the box thinking. Vox pops, and misty eyes will not save it this time. From the public perspective, Holyrood and Westminster are already two separated parents who should just get divorced, and the kids need to pick a house. And here’s our present predicament.

If the Union is lost, if the pressure to hold a second referendum becomes absolutely unavoidable, it will lead to independence because of strategic errors on the part of unionists.

Not the polls, not the SNP and not Nicola Sturgeon. The UK parties increasingly don’t get Scotland - we get our hair tussled, and some generic platitude handed out. We need new thinking on devo-max and federalism, modern attitudes to national parties across the UK and more pressingly someone to take the plunge to show how it can be done.

For those with a penchant for British history, the issues that we now face were always on the horizon as were the solutions. As early as 1912, everyone’s favourite bogeyman Winston Churchill was an early proponent of federalism for the UK and home rule for Scotland. Referendums were seriously advocated to break parliamentary gridlock by lesser-known (but highly formative) intellectuals such as Noel Skelton. Both were Conservatives and not afraid to think pragmatically.

If Ross didn’t return as an MP, it would inevitably be ripped apart by the SNP. But we’re not even calling for a dual mandate (serving as an MP, MSP and councillor simultaneously). Alex Salmond famously served as an MP and MSP between 1999-01, 2007-10 and 2015-16. No, this would be making a bold statement and commitment.

An inevitable comparison will be to Jim Murphy. He was Scottish Labour leader for four months while an MP before losing his seat and resigning in 2015. Yet his leadership was directionless, and never deliberately tried to take advantage of what it represented to the Union.

Any geographic distances seem irrelevant in an age of video and yes, phone in the COVID-19 climate. And if there’s a broader concern that Ross is at Westminster handling ‘English’ issues, then ‘English Votes for English Laws’ will confine his scope.

Aptly and in reverse, SNP MPs Joanna Cherry and Angus Robertson now want to make a move to Holyrood in 2021. If their move is centred on leadership, then Ross should also think about where he can be most effective. In truth, it is not at the Scottish Parliament.

So Ross is carrying more history than he realises.

And an opportunity. An MSP to MP bidding to become an MSP again now serving as a Scottish Tory leader as an MP. Convoluted, but it could be the future.