Colin Mackay Insight: Douglas Ross has done a Humza Yousaf and brought down his own leadership

Douglas Ross has been forced to resign because of his own actions.

That’s pretty much what Humza Yousaf had to do. He sacked the Greens from Government without thinking through the consequences; key amongst them giving up his majority which could have led to him losing a confidence vote.

The Conservatives sacked David Duguid as a candidate and replaced him with Douglas Ross. To almost everyone that looked like Douglas Ross pinching the seat from a sick colleague. It also meant he went back on his previous pledge to Conservative MSPs that he would quit Westminster and focus on leading the party at Holyrood.

Instead he is now aiming to quit Holyrood to go back to Westminster, although he has a financial safety net of staying in the Scottish Parliament if he loses next month.

Whatever happens he will stand down as Scottish Conservative leader after the General Election.

There is another reason behind that. The Sunday Mail had a story about his Westminster expenses, claiming that he had used them in connection with another of his jobs – as a linesman at football matches. Douglas Ross maintains he has done nothing wrong, and said he would welcome a review by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority; which is handy because IPSA has confirmed it will do just that.

Even if Douglas Ross is found to have done nothing wrong, as he maintains, this is still a troubling development for him because the story came from someone who used to work for him.

Given that they must have been pretty close to him, part of a fairly small team, he probably thinks he knows who it is and knows what else they might have access to. That could mean a constant drip of other potentially embarrassing information leaked until polling day and beyond.

All of that led to the unprecedented announcement of the resignation as party leader in the middle of an election campaign.

Douglas Ross really did do a Humza, he brought down his own leadership.