Can the new Scottish Tory leader thwart Nicola Sturgeon?

As a boy, Douglas Ross, the new leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party, had two interests: cows and football. Growing up on a dairy farm in Moray, he never aspired to hold political office. He enjoyed the solitude of early morning milking. ‘Some people like big tractors, other people like sheep. I was just really interested in dairy cattle, and Holsteins in particular,’ he explained earlier this year.

Now he finds himself faced with one of the more daunting tasks in British politics: thwarting Nicola Sturgeon and, in the process, preserving the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. In 2016, Ruth Davidson identified Ross as one of the most talented new Tory MSPs produced by that year’s Holyrood election. If Ross had not surprisingly defeated the Scottish National party’s deputy leader Angus Robertson in Moray at the 2017 Westminster election, he would probably have succeeded Davidson when she stepped down last August.