Douglas Ross doesn’t strike me as someone who did much clubbing in his youth.
The annual Morayshire NFU tea dance is doubtless a rare way to spend a Saturday afternoon but the only raving going on was over Mrs MacGillivray’s fruit scones. So the Scottish Tory leader’s defence of the dance floor was a selfless act. And, of course, a chance to get stuck into John Swinney, an even nobler act.
Vaccine passports come into force tomorrow morning, although lawyers for the nightclub sector were in court yesterday waging their own campaign to halt the scheme.
Ross drew a sharp contrast between ministers’ pro-business rhetoric and the mixture of despair and fury their actions had inspired among proprietors.
‘The First Minister said she was listening to the concerns of the industry and the businesses,’ he recalled. ‘Well, you don’t listen if you do not take on board their legitimate concerns. These industries are taking the deputy first minister and this SNP-Green coalition government to court.’
In fairness, that’s nothing new. This government’s been in court more times than Joe Beltrami.
Far from profit-hungry owners trying to avoid regulation, objections were coming from all directions. Ross quoted Judith Robertson, chair of the Scottish Human Rights Commission. Waving his right hand back and forth, like a conductor guiding an orchestra with an invisible baton, Ross turned one of the SNP’s favourite bodies against it. ‘She is telling ministers, she is urging ministers, to listen to the Scottish Human Rights Commission when they say the case for vaccine passports has not been made.’
Now, this was downright cheeky, given Ross and his benches generally regard the Commission as a bunch of bleeding-heart hoodie-huggers, but it was a cunning tack to take. Every Nat and Green MSP who voted against his motion was lining up against human rights and Ross, a mean old Tory, was standing angelically on The Right Side of History.
To rub it in even more, he quoted recent statements from Humza Yousaf, John Swinney and Patrick Harvie expressing scepticism about vaccine passports.
When the heckles rose up, he turned those to his advantage too: ‘They don’t want to listen. They know they have votes sewn up in this chamber now. They can ignore the Scottish Parliament. They can ignore this debating chamber. But they cannot ignore the voice of business, the voice of the public who are raising serious concerns.’
John Swinney intervened to point out ‘the Scottish Parliament voted for this — he said so himself a minute ago’, but Ross shot back: ‘This parliament is not just the SNP and the Greens. Scotland is not just the SNP and the Greens.’
Swinney got to his feet again: ‘Mr Ross obviously believes in the principle of parliamentary majorities determining the outcome of parliamentary votes because he has used his vote in the House of Commons to vote to ensure there is a cut to Universal Credit.’
‘He should perhaps look at Hansard,’ Ross replied. ‘He’ll find there has never been a vote on that issue in the UK Parliament.’
Oooh. Awkward.
It was a bravura performance from Ross, bolshy without being boorish and showing a deft hand in turning the SNP’s own pieties against it.
It was also a showcase for the Moray MP’s distinctively north-east style of speaking. Ross has a strained relationship with vowels. I wouldn’t say his rendering of the letter ‘a’ is entirely divorced from its standard pronunciation but they’re clearly undergoing a trial separation. So, the SNP’s definition of a nightclub ‘huss been established’ and the debate was the last chance for Holyrood to ‘huvv its say’.
As for the letter ‘i’, he’s so curt it’s bordering on rude. The i in ‘licensed’, commonly pronounced to rhyme with ‘eye’, comes out sounding like the i in ‘nice’ and sometimes like the opening ‘hey ho’ in the Ramones’ ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’.
The earthy, un-Central Belt tones suit Ross’s rhetorical style, which is punchy and energetic — all revved up and ready to go.
Originally published in the Scottish Daily Mail on September 30, 2021.
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