IS three-job Tory Douglas Ross looking for a fourth line of work? Speculation in Holyrood yesterday suggested the sometime MSP, sometime councillor and sometime international football referee was planning a move to Westminster.
Ross is supposedly looking to challenge SNP leader Angus Robertson to become the next MP for Moray. According to STV, the other Tories looking to flee Edinburgh for London are John Lamont, Ross Thomson and Miles Briggs. Thomson and Briggs were only elected as MSPs for the first time last year.
Ross was the Tory candidate in Moray at the last General Election in 2015, where Robertson won with a majority of 9065. However, it had the tightest result of any Scottish area in the EU referendum, with Remain winning by the slimmest of margins at 50.1 per cent.
Ross was again the Tory candidate in Moray for the 2016 Scottish Parliament election, but lost out to the SNP’s Richard Lochhead. There was a 13 per cent swing away from the SNP, and Lochhead’s majority was cut to 2875.
However, the Holyrood constit- uency is considerably smaller than its Westminster counterpart.
SNP MSP George Adam said: “This just proves how little regard the Tories have for the Scottish Parliament – deep down they all wish they were swanning around the Palace of Westminster.
“Just as Ruth Davidson ditched her Glasgow constituency so she could have a shorter commute, four Tory MSPs are all eyeing new jobs less than a year after their election.
“This will of course be John Lamont’s fourth attempt to abandon Holyrood for Westminster – which doesn’t speak well of his commitment to his constituents.
And Douglas Ross, the councillor and MSP who skipped his parliamentary duties to referee a football game in Portugal, is now putting in an application for his fourth job in under 12 months. The Tories love to talk about the ‘day job’ but they’re not even interested in doing the jobs they’ve already got.”
A Scottish Tory spokesman said: “Our local associations have to select any candidates before they are clear to stand, and that hasn’t happened yet.”
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