I would have won the seat, says former MP replaced by Douglas Ross as candidate

The former Scottish Conservative MP who was replaced as a candidate by Douglas Ross says he would have won the seat.

David Duguid, who had represented Banff and Buchan since 2017, was barred from standing in July’s general election on health grounds.

He had suffered a spinal stroke earlier in the year which, combined with pneumonia, led to a lengthy hospital stay including intense rehabilitation to allow him to walk again.

But he had planned to stand in the election and was confident of retaining the seat, even though his campaign would have had to be run slightly differently.

Speaking to the BBC, Duguid has said his party “evidently” made the wrong call as leader Douglas Ross did not win the slightly redrawn Aberdeenshire North and Moray East seat.

He was beaten by the SNP’s Seamus Logan by just 942 votes. Ross has blamed the loss on the large number of voters – 14.6 per cent – who backed the Reform UK candidate.

But Duguid believes that the decision to put the Scottish Tory leader in that seat encouraged to SNP to focus more efforts there because they “want to take the scalp”.

He said: “I think I would have won it… I did believe that anybody other than me – not because I’m the best MP or the best candidate, but because I had the incumbency, I had the name, people knew me as being a half-decent MP or a fully decent MP – so I thought any new candidate was not going to have that incumbency, which may not be worth that many votes but it could have made the difference between winning or losing.

“When it came to pass that it was Douglas, the party leader, I thought ‘well that’s going to make it even worse’. The SNP, who weren’t necessarily going to pay that much attention to Aberdeenshire North and Moray East now are going to throw everything at it because Douglas Ross is the candidate.”

He added that this also led to his own party having to put more resources into that seat, which may have cost it elsewhere – for example in neighbouring Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey and in Angus and Perthshire Glens, both seats where the party came second to the SNP.

The decision to make Ross the candidate for the seat was controversial, particularly as he had said he would not stand to be an MP again in order to focus more on his role as Scottish Tory leader at Holyrood. His own seat of Moray was abolished in boundary changes.

Following considerable disquiet from within his own party on the decision, Ross confirmed his intention to quit as party leader whether or not he won the seat.

The party is now in the midst of holding an election to replace him, with three contenders – Russell Findlay, Murdo Fraser and Meghan Gallacher – in the running.

MSP Pam Gosal has today stepped down from her role at Scottish Tory deputy chair to back Findlay, taking his total number of MSP backers to 12.

Fraser has the support of nine MSPs and Gallacher has two.

Writing in Holyrood earlier this month, Ross said he had been “disappointed” not to win the seat. He wrote: “As has been well documented, there were unique and extremely unfortunate circumstances that led me to step in at the last minute to contest Aberdeenshire North and Moray East. But it didn’t turn out as I’d hoped, and the sizeable Reform vote allowed the SNP to squeeze home – a similar dynamic to that which played out in the neighbouring constituency of Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey.

“My decision to fight the seat had already led me to announce that I would stand down as party leader, but I’m committed to carry on fighting tirelessly for Scotland and the Highlands and Islands.”