GRAHAM GRANT: Why DO the Tories keep stabbing their most successful party leaders in the back? By Graham Grant Home Affairs Editor For The Scottish Daily Mail Published: 22:41 BST, 10 June 2024 | Updated: 23:12 BST, 10 June 2024 e-mail View comments The SNP ’s reverse Midas touch is contagious and now the Tories have caught the bug – at a moment of existential crisis. With a little over three weeks until polling day, Douglas Ross has lobbed a hand grenade into a lacklustre campaign – by quitting. He had previously pledged to leave the Commons and concentrate on leading the Tories at Holyrood, but performed a U-turn last week, sparking an internal backlash.
Now he will run for a Westminster seat in the North-East, after the incumbent candidate David Duguid was sacked because of ill health – though he insists he’s fit to stand. It’s a shambles, and means that after the General Election the party will be plunged into a leadership contest, with no obvious successor lined up. Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross has announced he will step down from the role following the General Election There’s no doubt it’s an unceremonious exit for a leader who deserves credit for taking the fight to the SNP with a refreshing bullishness that was sadly lacking in Jackson Carlaw, the man he replaced.
At the last Holyrood election in 2021, the Conservatives’ vote share was 22.7 per cent – up from 22.5 per cent in 2016 – with more than 1.
2million Scots backing the party, an incr.
