Sir Jamie McGrigor, Bt, lively Tory Highlands and Islands MSP who created an official tartan register

Sir Jamie McGrigor, 6th Bt, who has died aged 75, was the picturesque Tory MSP who from 1999 until 2016 represented the Highlands and Islands.

Having failed to dislodge the sitting Labour candidate for the Western Isles at the 1997 general election – indeed, at 1,071 votes, McGrigor polled the lowest of any Tory candidate in Britain – he entered Holyrood two years later at the top of the Conservatives’ regional list for the Highlands and Islands.

An affable Old Etonian hill farmer from Argyll, with radiantly pink cheeks and disobedient hair, McGrigor played the part of the rustic squire to perfection at Holyrood. Described as “both aloof and gregarious, and both fey and focussed”, he enlivened public life in Scotland substantially with his battles against what he saw as the narrow mindset and dour demeanour of Central Belt MSPs.

But it was his dogged championing of beleaguered Scottish fishermen that defined his time in politics. As the Scottish Tories’ fisheries spokesman at the turn of the century, McGrigor was rarely out of the news during a period of crisis when fleets were being broken up under the twin pressures of EU quotas and domestic marine conservation policies.

His particular sub-specialism was the prawn, prompting the agriculture minister Ross Finnie to remark: “If Mr McGrigor can’t talk about prawns I fear he will not have much to say.” In practice, however, McGrigor ranged widely, from scallops (which faced the scare of amnesic shellfish poisoning) to cod. It was McGrigor’s amendment in March 2001, urging the Executive to compensate the cod fishermen who had tied up their boats to conserve fish stocks, which triggered the Executive’s first defeat of that parliament, and paved the way for a better-than-expected £25 million decommissioning scheme later that year.

The eldest of four children, James Angus Rhoderick Neil McGrigor was born in London on October 19 1949 to Captain Sir Charles McGrigor, 5th Bt, and his wife Mary, a historian and daughter of Sir Archibald Edmonstone, 6th Bt.

The McGrigor baronetcy, in which Jamie succeeded in 2007, had been created in 1831 for Sir James McGrigor, who had earlier been knighted as Surgeon-General to the Duke of Wellington’s armies in the Peninsula War; it was a standoff with McGrigor, who had allocated food to the wounded, that led the Iron Duke to ask: “Who commands the Army, Sir, I or you?” Having won Wellington’s confidence, McGrigor went on to lay the foundations of the modern Royal Army Medical Corps as the reforming Director-General of the Army Medical Department (1815-51).

He was educated at the tiny local school at Cladich, followed by Sunningdale and Eton. At Neuchâtel University in Switzerland, he read commercial French, then followed the hippy trail through Afghanistan, Kashmir and Russia before beginning his career on Clydeside, with J&A Gardner Shipping and Steamship Mutual Insurance Company. After a spell as a stockbroker in the City, in 1975 he returned to Argyll to start a pioneering trout farm and raise beef and blackface sheep.

On one occasion he got drunk at Dalmally market, and bought back the sheep he had been intending to sell; after that he remembered to pour the copious whiskies pressed upon him discreetly into his wellies.

He told The Sunday Telegraph that he was persuaded to stand for the Western Isles in the 1997 general election after a night at Annabel’s; it was a hopeless cause, cost him £20,000 personally and meant he missed the lambing season, but he gained at least one vote for the Tories by helping a farmer calve his cow.

He found grassroots politics enchanting: most people, when he asked if they had decided who to vote for, replied: “Yes, and it’s not for you – but won’t you come in for a dram?”

He entered Holyrood as the Tories’ deputy in rural affairs with special responsibility for fishing; from 2003 he was spokesman on tourism, culture and sport, but returned to his brief of environment, fishing and external affairs in a 2013 reshuffle. He was also the convener of the cross-party group on children and young people.

He articulated the frustrations of his far-flung constituents, calling for more ferries, more dentists and a solution to the notoriously landslide-prone “Rest and Be Thankful” section of the A83, the trunk road connecting Argyll with the Central Belt. He denounced “right-to-buy” land reform policies as reminiscent of Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.

McGrigor won the friendship of politicians across the spectrum, preferring “to treat opponents wedded to the doctrines of socialism or nationalism more as prodigal souls to be returned to the sensible path of pragmatism, rather than causes lost,” as former Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson put it. He was the moving spirit behind MSPs’ Gut Feelings: a Collection of Recipes from Members of the Scottish Parliament, to which he contributed his wife’s recipe for strawberry vodka.

In 2016 he was “encouraged” to stand down from the Scottish Parliament, but entered politics enthusiastically at a local level, as councillor for South Oban and Islands (2017-22).

A committed smoker, he suffered latterly from aggressive emphysema, and nicknamed his omnipresent oxygen tank “Rover”. As his mobility decreased, he entertained himself by watching – and betting on – women’s cricket.

He was a member of the Royal Company of Ar​chers, the Queen’s Body Guard for Scotland. In 2010 he was made a Kentucky Colonel.

Jamie McGrigor married first, in 1987, the French actress and film-maker Caroline Roboh, with whom he had two daughters; that marriage was dissolved in 1993 and he married secondly, in 1997, Emma Fellowes, with whom he had a son and three daughters. His wife and children survive him; his son Alexander, born in 1998, succeeds in the baronetcy.

Sir Jamie McGrigor, 6th Bt, born October 19 1949, died July 20 2025​

[Source: Daily Telegraph]