YOU wait for one manifesto to come along and suddenly they’re dropping like confetti –Except for Mr Sarwar’s, since he has a) postponed due to an “unscheduled” briefing from the FM on the salient day or b) postponed because he got in a fankle with his messaging.
But whilst a nation awaits with bated breath – or phones round its pals swapping notes on Line of Duty – pray silence for Douglas Ross MP, who has just unveiled his own party’s offering.
Dougie has what we might call an unusual approach to quashing any loose talk of another independence referendum; to wit, he just can’t stop talking about it.
Someone better at arithmetic than me, (almost anyone tbh) worked out that he used the term some 56 times – more nods than he gave any other issue like the NHS. Mr Ross’s utter obsession with the holding of another referendum is such that some Nats wish their leader could display the same level of enthusiasm for the same issue.
His warm up act was Annie Wells, who makes much of coming from a devout Labour family – her mum was even a Labour MP’s cleaner, she offered. It seems that somewhere on her philosophical journey Annie discovered that Tories were nice people who agreed with her on lots of things.
On account of which she remains proud of her Better Together campaign medals. Why anyone else could have that same Damascene conversion if they stopped and thought about it. OK, Annie. Gave it a go. Didn’t work.
But the main event was Mr Ross, a man who leads a small flock in the House of Commons whose independence of mind has still to be located. Even when their cousins up the road in Holyrood vote for something all motherhood and apple pie like children’s rights, if Boris says they got it wrong, Dougie is not about to disagree. Look here. You don’t get the keys of the branch office by falling out with the boss.
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The other thing he mentions a lot, as did Ms Wells, was the importance of giving your party vote to the Conservatives. No mention is made these days of winning a constituency seat. You could call this pragmatic, or consider it defeatist. If I were a Tory candidate, which proposition you may file under flying pigs, I would be a mite embarrassed about this.
What Mr Ross wishes you to bear in mind is that recovery from Covid-induced economic blight is all that matters; that and stopping the Nats staging, all together now: “another divisive referendum.” Under Mr Ross’ branch management, divisive is the hardest working adjective in the dictionary.
Subsidiary mention was given to some other familiar Tory tropes. Tough on crime and, er, tough on crime. Whole life sentences, unless you’re leading the Scottish Tories in which case you might get round his other pledge for an end to early release.
Mr Ross is the kind of apparently inoffensive young man with whom you might share a pleasant enough shandy at the golf club bar provided you don’t mention Travellers. Or independence. Or first past the post.
As a Tory First Minister – see in flight pigs reference – he would preside over no fewer than 15 separate bills in the next parliament. Only 48 fewer than the Government got through in the last five wasted years.
If Scotland needs a dynamic duo to steer it through post pandemic choppy waters, I fear Ross and Wells may not quite cut the tartan mustard. And don’t get me started on Alister Jack, beside whom Dougie seems positively Tiggerish.
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