REBELLION OF THE SCOTS TORIES
BORIS Johnson faced a rebellion from Scottish Tories yesterday amid a ‘huge wave of anger’ at Dominic Cummings for refusing to resign.
Scotland Office Minister Douglas Ross began a major backlash by quitting the Government in protest.
Scottish Tory leader Jackson Carlaw also called for the Prime Minister’s most trusted aide to go, saying the issue is damaging the message to the public to obey the lockdown.
Mr Ross’s departure is a blow for Mr Johnson as the Scot was seen as a rising star who was likely to become a member of the Cabinet in the future.
In a statement yesterday morning, the Moray MP, who ousted then-SNP Westminster leader Angus Robertson in the 2017 general election, said that ‘events over the last few days mean I can no longer serve as a member of this Government’.
Mr Ross added: ‘I have never met Dominic Cummings so my judgment on this matter has always been open and I accept his statement on Monday clarified the actions he took in what he felt were the best interests of his family. However, these were decisions many others felt were not available to them.’ He said that, as a father, he would always put his son and wife first – but would also be prepared to follow the Government advice and stay at home.
Mr Ross highlighted constituents who had been unable to attend funerals of loved ones or visit relatives. He said: ‘I cannot in good faith tell them they were all wrong and one senior adviser to the Government was right.
‘This is not a decision I have reached quickly... I realise both the immediate and long-term implications of my decision to resign from Government.’
Last night, Mr Ross told STV he ‘couldn’t get his head around’ Mr Cummings’s claim that he had driven for 30 minutes to a beauty spot – and back – to test his vision.
The MP added: ‘That’s a bit that I really can’t go out there and defend. Ultimately, I had to make a decision and as a government minister, you have to defend the Government.
Therefore I’m able to express my concerns now, outwith government.’
Mr Carlaw called for Mr Cummings to quit yesterday, having previously said it was a matter for Mr Johnson.
The Scottish Tory leader told the Mail: ‘We saw Mr Cummings give his explanation, some people will have found aspects of that underwith standable. But this is just not going away and it is becoming a huge distraction.
‘If it were me, I would now be considering my position. That is the position I have arrived at.
‘You get to the stage in all of this where we are diluting the message, diluting the focus the country has to have in tackling the virus, and the continuing furore, if I were him, I would have to consider whether it was time to go.’
He refused to directly call for Mr Johnson to sack his aide, saying that remains a decision for the Prime Minister.
Mr Carlaw, who has never met Mr Cummings, previously faced anger from within his party after issuing a statement on Sunday saying it was a matter for the PM to judge.
One MSP told the Spectator that members of the Scottish group were ‘in despair’ at his stance, adding: ‘His major interest seems to be not rocking the boat with London so he can collect a knighthood or peerage in a couple of years.’
On Monday Mr Carlaw convened clear-the-air talks at which he told MSPs and MPs they were free to express their own view as long as they accepted it was the Prime Minister’s decision.
He said: ‘There is a huge wave of anger and opinion about this all over the country.’ But he was a ‘bit disappointed’ with some of the subsequent ‘anonymous, unattributed briefing’. He added: ‘I would love to know, I would love to meet, the person who thought I was in it for nothing more than a peerage.
‘These decisions are incredibly difficult and, in fact, the easiest decision in some ways is just to come out and shout he must go.
‘I just felt at the weekend, in the absence of the facts, that was the wrong thing to do.’
Several members of Mr Carlaw’s frontbench team backed Mr Ross’s decision. Strategy chief Adam Tomkins said: ‘To lose Douglas Ross from government is a disaster. His was one of clearest voices for the Union in government. It shows exactly why Cummings should be sacked. I suspect others will follow where Douglas has led.’
Scottish Secretary Alister Jack thanked Mr Ross for his ‘contribution’ as a minister and added: ‘I know he will continue to be a dedicated constituency MP for Moray.’
‘Not a decision I’ve reached quickly’
BORIS Johnson’s installation as Prime Minister last year may have roused and united the Conservative Party in England, but for many Scottish Tories, his success was thoroughly depressing.
Since taking over the leadership of the Scottish Conservatives in 2011, Ruth Davidson had worked tirelessly to detoxify her party’s brand.
She reached out to Scots who would never previously have considered voting Tory and persuaded many of them that her brand of modern, compassionate conservatism was something they could comfortably support.
Thanks to Miss Davidson, voters who until relatively recently caricatured the Conservatives as malign decided to give the party a chance.
Her mission was made easier by the fact that the first two Prime Ministers she worked with – David Cameron and Theresa May – didn’t quite live up to the cliches which had so badly damaged the party in Scotland.
Mr Johnson, on the other hand, represented exactly the sort of Tory – blustering, thoughtless and privileged – from whom so many recoil.
Only five weeks after Mr Johnson entered Downing Street, Miss Davidson stepped down as Scottish Tory leader. In part, her decision was down to life changes. She’d become a mother for the first time and had taken time to re-evaluate her priorities.
But it was also clear that her intense dislike of Mr Johnson and his approach to politics played its part. Why would she make the sacrifices required of her role to shore up support for a Johnson government in which she had no faith? When Jackson Carlaw stepped up to lead the Scottish Tories, his mission was clear. He had to build on the work Miss Davidson had done to make their party distinctive from the UK organisation. The greatest danger he faced was not barbs from his opponents but the impact of the Johnson brand.
However, lacking the charisma and energy of Miss Davidson, he has struggled. So when the politics gods looked down on him on Friday, they must have expected nothing but gratitude. The exposure of Dominic Cummings gave Mr Carlaw the most remarkable, unexpected, opportunity to cement his political authority – he was handed both cow’s backside and banjo. All he had to do was strike the former with the latter. Yet he missed, spectacularly.
When he finally called for Mr Cummings to consider his position, the overwhelming sense was that this was much too little, much too late.
Rather than seizing the opportunity to reflect legitimate public anger over Mr Cummings’s behaviour, Mr Carlaw had stood on the sidelines.
One Scottish Tory source said: ‘We were hearing the same thing from people, whether they voted for us or not: they were bloody furious about Cummings. We could hardly blame them because that’s how everyone I spoke to in the party felt.’
Necessity
Mr Carlaw’s initial pronouncement on the scandal, a statement on Sunday in which he praised the Prime Minister but avoided expressing an opinion on the adviser’s behaviour, infuriated colleagues.
A number of MSPs began – privately – to distance themselves from their leader, horrified that he had failed so badly to read the public mood.
There were, one Tory MSP explained, two good reasons that Mr Carlaw should have immediately called for Mr Cummings to go.
There was the simple political necessity of removing a figure whose presence continues to damage the reputation of the UK Government.
But there was something more important – the moral obligation to speak out.
When Scotland’s chief medical officer Dr Catherine Calderwood was caught breaking lockdown to visit her second home, Mr Carlaw led calls for her resignation.
When news of Dr Calderwood’s
actions broke, he said her position had become untenable ‘given the damage this has caused public trust’. There could not, he added, be one rule for the bosses and another for everyone else.
Mr Carlaw’s quick reaction to the Calderwood scandal seemed a decent indication that he grasped the extent of – and the reasons for – the public fury that erupted.
When Nicola Sturgeon eventually sacked Dr Calderwood, it was down, in part, to pressure applied by Mr Carlaw.
Why, then, wondered some of his most senior colleagues, did the Scottish Tory leader squander what political capital he might have had by stepping back from the Cummings row? Couldn’t he see that it would undermine his moral authority and leave him open to accusations of hypocrisy?
Yesterday, Mr Carlaw faced the humiliation of senior colleagues breaking ranks to say that, in fact, they believed Mr Cummings should be sacked. When Douglas Ross announced his decision to resign as a minister, his principled stand was quickly supported by senior MSPs Adam Tomkins and Donald Cameron, both in Mr Carlaw’s frontbench team.
By the time it emerged that veteran Tory MSP Murdo Fraser was also in favour of Mr Cummings’s departure, Mr Carlaw’s authority lay in tatters. This crisis had demanded strong leadership and he had failed at the most basic level.
When, a little after 2pm yesterday, Mr Carlaw announced it was now time for Mr Cummings to consider his position, it was hard not to interpret his statement as having been driven not by principle but by expediency. With what was left of his reputation fluttering out to sea, Mr Carlaw finally realised which way the wind was blowing.
It is difficult to understand why he lost his nerve. This was, after all, an opportunity for him to distance himself from the Johnson brand.
As one Scottish Tory source put it: ‘Jackson literally had nothing to lose by going after Cummings. He started off looking like Boris’s poodle and then, when he finally spoke, he looked like he was doing it because he had to, not because he thought it was the right thing to do.’
Many had been surprised when Ruth Davidson appointed Mr Carlaw as her deputy. She was the socially liberal, modernising face of a new kind of Conservatism while he was a blazer-wearing suburban Tory whose politics were forged in the Thatcher-era.
In fact, this partnership of opposites was not unsuccessful. Mr Carlaw quickly grasped the need to improve the Tory brand in Scotland and he was soon fully signed up to the Davidson revolution.
Ambition
And he initially proved a surprisingly competent replacement. He’d always had a reputation as a witty debater, someone who could be depended upon to bring a touch of lightness. But as acting leader, he also displayed a knack for tough questioning during parliamentary clashes with Nicola Sturgeon.
Now he finds himself in charge of a party whose most competent politicians have lost what faith they had in him.
One despaired: ‘Where to begin? Where to begin? I’m beyond fed up.’
Another, suggesting Mr Carlaw’s actions might have had something to do with an ambition to one day sit in the House of Lords, sniped: ‘Nothing comes between Jackson and his seat on the red benches.’
Those colleagues are right to be angry. It took Ruth Davidson years to bring the Scottish Conservatives back from the wilderness. Those who believed the party had changed may look at Mr Carlaw’s initial response to this scandal and wonder whether that’s true.
When the Scottish Tory leader called for Catherine Calderwood to go, he did so unequivocally and spoke on behalf of the majority who play by the rules. He had right on his side.
When he finally, meekly, called for Dominic Cummings to ‘consider his position’, yesterday, he just seemed rather pathetic.