Douglas Ross is the Conservative MP for Moray, having first been elected to Parliament in 2017. He was re-elected in the 2019 General Election with a majority of 513 over the Scottish National Party.
Since May 2021, Douglas Ross has also served as a Member of the Scottish Parliament, representing the Conservative Party on the Highlands and Islands Regional List. He thus combines his role as an MP with that of his role as an MSP at Holyrood.
He has detailed his intention to step down from Westminster at the next election, and instead will concentrate on Holyrood.
Moray is a large and rural constituency that spreads down from a stretch of the Moray Firth towards the edge of the Cairngorms National Park. It contains a number of small towns such as Elgin, Forres, and Keith. To the east of the seat, a proportion of residents commute to the oil industry city of Aberdeen, whilst farming, fisheries, and whisky all play a role in the local economy,, The RAF base at Lossiemouth can be found in this seat.
Moray was traditionally a Scottish National Party seat being held by the SNP between 1987 and 2017. However in recent years it has bucked the national trend in Scotland, as the unionist vote has converged around the Conservative Party allowing them to defeat the SNP, albeit only narrowly in 2019. This is currently one of the ten most marginal seats at Westminster.
Douglas Ross was appointed as the Leader of the Scottish Conservative Party in August 2020. He served briefly as Under Secretary of State for Scotland between 2019 and 2020.
Born in 1983, Ross grew up in Moray and studied Agriculture at the Scottish Agricultural College, before working on a dairy farm. He served as a councillor in Moray and briefly as a Member of the Scottish Parliament (2016-17) before being elected to Westminster in 2017.
He supported Boris Johnson in the 2019 Conservative Party leadership election.
In early 2022, Ross publicly called for Johnson to resign on the back of the PM admitting that he attended the Downing Street gathering in May 2020 claiming the PM’s position is “no longer tenable”, and confirming that he had sent a letter of no confidence. Following the outbreak of war in Ukraine, Mr Ross publicly retracted his call for Boris Johnson to resign.
Ross is a qualified football official, and ran the line as an Assistant Referee in the 2015 Scottish Cup Final. He has also officiated in a number of UEFA Champions League Matches, international matches, and in the Old Firm Debry between Rangers and Celtic. To this extent, Ross is well prepared for the rough and tumble of abuse that accompanies modern British politics.
According to the Register of Members Interests, Ross was still officiating in occasional football matches, even in 2020. He received payments in the region of a thousand pounds for serving as an assistant referee in a variety of UEFA matches including Shakhtar Donesk against Benfica (£1,356.25), and an international game between Luxembourg and Cyprus (£1,035.32).
At Westminster, Douglas Ross is Vice Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Groups on Bingo. He is married with one son.
Email – douglas.ross.mp@parliament.uk
Website – https://www.douglasross.org.uk/
Twitter – @Douglas4Moray
