Andrew Tickell: Douglas Ross has turned off even the most rabid Tories

Persuaded by this logic, the frog leaps off its lily pad into the water and the ­scorpion settles down to be ferried over to the other side. After a few good strokes, agony rips through the frog. It’s been stung. As its limbs seize up and the water rises, it croaks a final question at the scorpion: “Why did you sting me? Now we will both surely drown.” “It’s in my character,” the scorpion says, sinking with him.

The fable has its origins in Russian ­folklore. As the genre goes, this ­folktale has an unusual cautionary message: ­self-interest never explains everything. It seems to say sometimes people inclined towards ­badness will be bad – not because it helps them at all, but because doing harm is in their nature. They just can’t help themselves.

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With politicians, it isn’t unusual for there to be a public and a private face they wear. Many of the best of them – purely from a performance perspective – have the actor’s knack of turning their charm on or off. ­Usually television cameras or members of the public are involved.

Only political staffers, trained to ­obedience and partisan discretion, get to see the full horror of how getting seriously involved in politics can distort the human character. If, that, is, your minister or MP wasn’t a human corkscrew to begin with. But the twisted and the malicious usually make some effort – most go to great lengths, in fact – to present their best face to the world. Most make strenuous efforts to seem agreeable.

Agreeableness is one of those pop-psychological concepts North Americans get excited about. Some psychologists reckon it is one of the so-called “big five” personality traits, combining with traits like conscientiousness, neuroticism, and extraversion to make up a complete personality.

In Scottish culture, we vacillate a bit on whether we like to think of ourselves, on the whole, as more outgoing and cheerful, or gruffer and dourer. From the thrawn pub landlord to the gabby ­Glaswegian ­besetting introverted ­tourists with ­unsolicited advice – both find an ­honoured place in the culture.

But on the whole, our society places a greater store by agreeableness than not. Most people prefer to be liked rather than disliked. If anything, we’re often too ­anxious about making honest enemies, as if all enmity between people is a ­mistake or something needing fixed. One of the lessons of growing older should be ­caring a little less than young folk tend to do about what other people, particularly strangers, imagine they think and know about you. People have different values and boundaries. Some folk don’t get on – and that’s OK.

But politicians are in the agreeability business. They don’t have the luxury of shrugging their shoulders and telling their critics – explicitly or implicitly – to take a long walk off a short pier. Or so we might have thought, until a new ­phenomenon called Douglas Ross brashly shoved ­himself to the front of Scottish politics a few years ago, elbowing Jackson ­Carlaw out of his way, and installing himself ­uncontested as the new party leader from Westminster.

Ross’s short political career is a study in how far you can go, by making no effort towards agreeability whatsoever. But it is also a fable in the political limits of this kind of behaviour.

You might think Ross revealed ­something significant about himself when, as a new MP, he said his first ­priority if he was PM for a day would be “tougher ­enforcement on gypsy ­travellers”, in a proud and happy voice.

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Kicking away ­David Duguid’s crutch to run for the Westminster seat of ­Aberdeenshire North and Moray East while he was in still ­hospital – having to all intents and ­purposes stitched up the reselection in his favour – is one of the most sordid episodes in modern Scottish politics – made all the funnier, by the ­electorate’s decision to ­return someone else to Parliament instead.

This weekend’s revelations in The ­Daily Telegraph, suggesting Ross attempted to strong-arm another Westminster ­election candidate into standing down in his ­favour as early as July 2023 – despite ­publicly and privately denying any ­interest in a return to London – has set-off a chain-reaction in the increasingly fraught Scottish Tory leadership race, with leading candidates accusing the party politburo of a stitch up and others demanding that Ross should be sacked immediately rather than ­subsiding into unhappy retirement on the Holyrood backbenches as planned.

The tale is entirely consistent with ­everything our own eyes have told us about Ross’s approach to politics. He is one of those politicians about whom you hear extraordinary stories behind the scenes. Despite being an MSP and leader of the Scottish Tories in Holyrood, over the last four years, Ross has been an ­active member of Westminster’s Scottish Affairs Committee.

Like most other parliamentary ­committees, it transacts some of its ­business in public and some in private. Committee hearings are inherently ­dramatic, can be confrontational – and the cameras are rolling. If you are a ­grandstanding politician with a flair for cross-examination and one of your ­political opponents in the hot seat, a little cross-examination seems justified.

But parliamentary committees also go roving around the country, taking informal evidence, talking to experts, trying to understand their briefs better – without every remark being on the record, on camera, and preserved for posterity. You’d think this kind of fact-finding jaunt would encourage the human side of our politicians. You can ask searching questions and challenge assumptions politely.

Even in this kind of context, I’m told, Ross became notorious for tearing strips off random punters, recreationally ­bullying civilians invited to talk to the committee. These ­antics embarrassed ­colleagues but Ross blasted and sneered away undaunted, like he was collecting points at a Young ­Farmers ­debate night.

Needless to say, the folk savaged by this particular dead sheep were stunned to be addressed with this kind of personal animus, as if they were MPs two swords-lengths apart in the chamber of the House of Commons, rather than experts and practitioners taking time to share their knowledge with lawmakers. You can’t even chalk it up as show boating. There were no cameras around, no votes in it, no viral video to generate and no ­obvious political purpose. Like the scorpion, Ross just couldn’t help himself. It’s in his ­nature.

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The essence of Ross’s leadership pitch was always “nobody hates better than me”, and by gum has he lived that ­commitment. He spoke to that part of the Scottish Tory soul which after 2014 ­wanted muscular Unionism, and a brash and unlovely champion to set out the SNP. Ross retained Ruth ­Davidson’s ­centring of Scottish Tory messaging around the constitution and a rejection of ­independence, but without Davidson’s studied gestures towards liberalism and centrism, which won over so many of Scotland’s vibes-based political analysts.

In Ross’s case, no serious PR effort to project an appearance of ­affability was ­attempted, beyond the occasional ­strategic deployment of his kids in party political broadcasts, as if a capacity to procreate tells you much about a man’s personality or attitude towards the role of government in society. To steal a lyric from Leonard Cohen, You want it darker, Ross’s leadership said. And he was the man he promised to be and more.

A small contrary part of me ­almost ­admires this complete refusal to ­compromise. Almost. Many modern ­politicians ooze superficial empathy. Like greased cephalopods, they glide sleekly through the world, leaving behind them a slimy trail of unmeant, unfelt ­bonhomie. Give me a dose of honest ­contempt any day. At least you know where you are when you meet folk bristling with ­suspicion.

Ross is only 41. He has only been ­involved in national politics for just eight years. And during that short period of time, has pursued a political career of such charmless angularity, with no ­concessions to ordinary human agreeableness, that has not only alienated his ­political opponents, but more or less ­everyone who has ever come into contact with him – including almost all of the ­Holyrood group he will haunt for the next two years.

But it turns out that zero ­agreeability has a shelf life. You can tell yourself you feed off of the hostility of your ­opponents. You can tell yourself you take a perverse kind of pleasure in being disliked. You can even convince yourself that your rudeness, disrespect, chicanery and ­inhumanity are just the price of doing business. And you’d be dead wrong.