Look black in anger Will referee Ross’s new pitch win over Boris?

The cynic in me notes Mr Ross’s volte-face came two weeks after the Russian invasion, but mere days before the Prime Minister is due at the Party conference

I NEVER thought I’d even read these words far less write them, but Jacob Rees-Mogg may have been right. I’ll tell you why and about what after I’ve had a lie down. OK, I’m back, and more or less recovered.

The Honourable Member for the 18th century, as he is known, may have been right when he called Douglas Ross a lightweight. Things so termed catch in gusts and are flung about the place. They either appear to lack agency completely or – I’m thinking plastic carrier bags here – they do a swooping sort of loop-the-loop which looks almost planned and graceful at first but then not graceful at all when they end up skewered on a TV aerial.

Which is kind of where the leader of the Scottish Conservative Party finds himself. Hence a lightweight.

Mr Rees-Mogg, if you recall, made the comment in a Newsnight interview. Check it out: the thud on the audio is the jaw of presenter Kirsty Wark hitting the floor, the blur around the Old Etonian’s bespectacled head the miasma of arrogance and affected nonchalance he wears in place of Lynx Africa BO jammer. But he may still have been right.

Why? Because Mr Ross has been blown about by the political weather and now finds himself facing in a completely different direction to before.

You see, having previously stated that he has no confidence in Boris Johnson, having called on him to resign, and having submitted one of those all-important letters to the 1922 Committee saying all this, he has now changed his mind. Just like that.

‘Jellyfish’s backbone’

I IMAGINE one or two of his political enemies have already sidled up to him and sung a version of the Hokey Cokey in his ear (“You put your letter in, you take your letter out. In, out, in, out, you shake it all about” etc.). Certainly, they have not been slow to condemn him and bandy around words such as “humiliation” and “embarrassment”. One even described him as having “the backbone of a jellyfish”.

I daresay a few of Mr Ross’s erstwhile political friends may feel like doing the same thing: those Tories do love a bit of blue-on-blue action, after all.

Perhaps South Scotland MSP Craig Hoy will be one of them. “[Douglas Ross] has been clear, consistent – and he is correct”, he tweeted when Mr Ross made his original Boris Out! statement. Next in line, perhaps, will be Murdo Fraser MSP. “I’m afraid the Prime Minister’s position is no longer tenable, he has lost public trust, and in the interests of the country and the Conservative Party he should step down,” he tweeted at the time in support of Mr Ross.

Will Balfour back off?

AND then there’s Lothian MSP Jeremy Balfour, who tweeted that Mr Ross was “absolutely right” in his calls for the Prime Minister to go. “[He] has betrayed the trust of the public and he must resign immediately,” he wrote. Oh dear.

In fact, the majority of the Tory group at Holyrood came out behind Mr Ross. But now he has changed his mind. Just like that.

Now, presumably, he thinks the Prime Minister’s position is tenable, that he has not lost public trust, and that this new position is as clear, consistent and correct as the old one that was its exact opposite.

Perhaps the man in black in him has come into play, by which I mean his football referee persona. Perhaps he is party to some kind of political VAR nobody else knows about. Perhaps he has been in touch with the political equivalent of

Stockley Park, VAR HQ, and been informed via an earpiece nobody else can see that no, the Prime Minister was not offside and did not handle the ball (or the crisps or the bubbly or the birthday cake) and the decision to call on him to resign should be overturned. Or perhaps the Russians have invaded Ukraine and begun murdering children and pregnant women, and threatened the rest of us with nuclear war. Yes, that’s probably it. Perhaps Mr Ross has deployed every particle of his political nous and concluded that the UK is threatened by a man who is selfobsessed, slippery, mendacious and ego-driven – but that he should stay on as Prime Minister so he can face up to Vladimir Putin.

And have Mr Ross’s Holyrood colleagues, like a confusion of chiffchaffs or a trembling of finches, found themselves U-turning precipitously in order to follow their leader? Yes, they have. “This is the right move at this time,” tweeted Murdo Fraser on Thursday, when Mr Ross announced that he was withdrawing his letter of no confidence. He continued: “It would be deeply irresponsible to seek to change Prime Minister when the international situation is as it is.” He also posted a comment piece from Boris-boosting

Perhaps Mr Ross has concluded the UK is threatened by a man who is selfobsessed, slippery, mendacious and ego-driven – but that he should stay on as Prime Minister so he can face up to Putin

tabloid The Sun about the “thawing” in relations between Mr Johnson and Mr Ross. I read it so you don’t have to: it went something along the lines of “it was only a spat, there’s other stuff to worry about, let bygones be bygones”.

The leader of the Scottish Tories calls for the head of a PM and it’s only a spat?

By the by, the cynic in me notes that Mr Ross’s volte-face came two weeks after the Russian invasion of Ukraine but mere days before the Prime Minister is due to travel north to address the Scottish Conservative Party conference – and a month-and-a-bit before Scottish council elections at which the deep division between the two leaders would have been exploited mercilessly by Labour and SNP.

A rational rethink?

THEN again, perhaps Mr Ross means it. Perhaps he is simply showing himself to be a man possessed of rationality as well as conviction, big enough to change his mind and be seen to do it.

“I don’t care,” he said in an interview on BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme when asked if his U-turn really did make him look like a lightweight. “I really don’t care. I know political opponents will criticise me for this. That’s fine. I’ve had to take a decision looking at what’s happening on the world scene at the moment.” Anything else, he added, “just seems trivial”.

Fair play. After all, dogmatism, inflexibility and monovision are faults regularly laid at the feet of our politicians, so let’s praise those who can unburden themselves of those ills. In terms of flexibility, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives is proving himself positively double-jointed.