I did not expect to be coming back to this list quite
so quickly, but the SNP scandals keep on coming and show no sign of stopping.
152. SNP MP Drew Hendry is kicked out of the House of
Commons for refusing to sit down and attempting to take an object (the mace)
out of the chamber which did not belong to him.
153. SNP MP David Linden spent taxpayers’ money
sending birthday cards to children when they turned eighteen.
154. SNP spent £60,000 on a fake café for an advert. The owner of the café was fake too.
155. Andrew Wilson’s firm Charlotte Street Partners worked for consortium IHSL which gets £1.4 million per month to run Edinburgh sick kids hospital which wasn’t even open.
156. SNP councillor Graham Campbell spent £5000 of
public money on mobile phone roaming charges while on a visit to the Gambia.
This was about 100 times more than his colleagues.
157. SNP MSP Kenny Gibson was accused of bullying
female party members, but Peter Murrell and Nicola Sturgeon allegedly did
nothing about it. There couldn’t be a pattern emerging here?
158. Forget me not care and counselling received
£55,000 from the Scottish Government but only spent £10,000 on counselling. The
Scottish Government admitted it had not carried out background checks on SNP
activist Linsay Bonar, who said the charity was not open because she had lost
the key.
159. Angus Robertson promised to donate the profits
from his taxpayer funded second home to charity, but apparently failed to do
so.
160. Joanna Cherry criticised Emily Thornberry for missing a vote when Thornberry was at a
hospital with one of her children and her absence was authorised. Cherry
declined to apologise.
161. Pete Wishart claimed the cost of renting his flat
twice for expenses due to a mistake in paperwork.
162. SNP MP Dr Philippa Whitford falsely claimed that
privatisation is forcing the cancellation of gullet cancer operations in a
Gateshead hospital that never did offer them.
163. SNP MP Owen Thompson was exposed in 2013 for his
involvement with front organisation Labour for independence. He was pictured
with two other SNP members pretending to be Labour voters.
164. SNP candidate Neil Hay compared No voters to Nazi
collaborators, but Sturgeon refused to sack him.
165. Nicola Sturgeon receives emails from Brian Smith
comparing her to a Nazi and Mrs Thatcher and he is arrested. Unfortunately Mr Smith wasn't an SNP MP.
166. SNP MP Alyn Smith apologised and paid legal costs
after branding the Brexit party a money laundering front.
167. SNP MP Tommy Sheppard chaired an “open” meeting
which barred Jewish activists, and which had a speaker who made anti-Semitic
remarks.
168. SNP tried to cover-up the story of Derek Mackay grooming a teenager. Mr Mackay’s inappropriate behaviour towards young men was common knowledge in the SNP, but nothing was done about it. Again, a pattern is emerging.
169. SNP MP John Nicolson did not know what seat he was standing for at the General Election telling the crowd at a husting in Ochil and South Perthshire that only he could win in East Dunbartonshire.
170. SNP MSP John Mason compared Celtic Boys Club
abuse with Rangers dodging taxes.
171. SNP MP George Kerevan claimed that Hilary Benn’s
father would be turning in his grave when he disagreed with him about a vote at
Westminster.
172. An unknown
SNP MP farted so violently in the House of Commons that SNP MP Patricia Gibson
was forced to recoil in horror and waft the stench away with her hand.
173. SNP MSP Roseanna Cunningham had a meltdown when a
debate about independence in the Scottish Parliament was suspended because of a
terror attack at Westminster.
174. SNP member
Denise Findlay who worked on an SNP conduct committee investigating SNP MP Neale
Hanvey’s anti-Semitism described Israel as a Nazi state.
175. SNP MP Douglas Chapman said on the eve of Remembrance
Day said that Winston Churchill had deliberately sacrificed the 51st Highland
Division in World War 2.
176. SNP MP Steven Bonnar crosses his fingers when he
pledges allegiance to the Queen. Do we really want MPs to be liars?
177. SNP MSP candidate Fulton MacGregor accused of
professional misconduct for improperly accessing confidential files to help a political
ally.
178. SNP MPs failed to respect the traditions of the
House of Commons by clapping, but refused to follow convention by applauding
Theresa May when she stepped down as Prime Minister.
179. SNP MPs started a childish battle to claim Dennis
Skinner’s seat, but lost.
180. SNP MPs are described as goons by Gerald Kaufman
for their infantile behaviour in Parliament.
181. Pete Wishart made vile online slurs including
that “parties that back Scotland remaining in the UK were w*****”
182. Brian Smith convenor of the SNP's Skye and
Lochalsh branch resigns after calling Charles Kennedy a drunken slob" and
"quisling-in-chief".
183. Angus MacNeil claimed thousands of pounds in expenses
so that he could learn Icelandic despite their being rather few Icelandic
speakers in Scotland all of whom speak English better than Mr Macneil.
184. Alex Salmond had the worst voting record as an MP but claimed the highest travelling expenses of £48,471 per year.
185. Alex Salmond gave a 17 year old student a rather suggestive lick of his lollipop.
186 Joe FitzPatrick SNP
MSP and Public Health Minister resigns after Scottish drug deaths are the worst
in Europe doubling since 2014.
187. Nicola Sturgeon
tried to block Prince William and his wife Kate from travelling to Scotland,
forgetting that people are allowed to cross the border for work purposes. William
and Kate were working.
188. Hayley Matthew SNP
conference host endorsed Covid conspiracy theories and described the vaccine as
sh*te.
189. SNP Government has been accused of hoarding £1 billion of cash given by Westminster instead of giving it to the Scots who need it.
190. Jeanne Freeman continues
to allow elderly people to be sent from hospitals to care homes without having
negative tests for Covid. This is despite around half of all Scottish Covid
deaths taking place in care homes.
191. James Wolffe
Scotland’s most senior law officer admitted that the SNP Government had made embarrassing
and incorrect promises to Scotland’s highest court over documents relating to
its investigation of Alex Salmond.
192. Nicola Sturgeon has claimed
that her Covid strategy has been better than Westminster has been undermined by
England having 40 deaths per million while Scotland has 50 deaths per million.
193. Jeane Freeman wanted
to suspend freedom of information requests during the pandemic not that the SNP
is secretive or has anything to hide.
194. Nicola Sturgeon made
the Scottish Government’s harassment policy apply to former ministers like Alex
Salmond hours after one of his accusers made a disclosure to her. Not that she
was out to get him of course.
195. Covidiot in chief
Margaret Ferrier lost the party whip, but has not been expelled from the SNP party.
196. SNP MP Paul Monaghan
described the Union Flag as a “Butcher’s apron”.
197. £180k Holyrood
handouts linked to firms connected with Ian Blackford.
198. As Covid cases
increased in Scotland Kate Higgins showed SNP priorities by complaining about a
Union Flag on some beef. This is like someone complaining about a French flag
on a bottle of Burgundy and demanding the Burgundian flag in its place.
199. Nicola Sturgeon’s claim
that Alex Salmond was angry with her because she refused to collude with him is
contradicted by her previous testimony in Parliament.
200. Peter Murrell is accused
of misleading the Alex Salmond Inquiry.
I don’t remember the last time I watched All the
president’s men (1976), but it was long enough ago that I’d forgotten most of
the details. I watched it again because Scotland in 2020 reminds me of America
in 1972. The biggest scandal in Scottish political history is waiting to be
revealed. It won’t go away and it’s getting closer and closer to the President.
What we lack in Scotland is reporters who are willing to investigate,
interrogate and tell the truth fearlessly. We lack the newspapers that can fund
such reporting, because anyway the whole era of newspapers that existed in 1972
has been destroyed by satellite news and the Internet. Which newspaper today
depending on a paywall or advertising could fund Woodward and Bernstein?
The difference also is that Republicans in 1972 were
willing to testify about the inner workings of their party and Republican
Woodward was willing to bring down Nixon because he was a crook and had
subverted democracy in America. Scottish nationalists on the other hand think
that the goal of independence justifies anything and as yet no major source
from within the inner circle of the SNP has been willing to testify about the
workings and secrets at the centre of the party.
But SNP supporters who are crowing about the high
level of support their party and their independence cause has at the moment,
must surely be aware that such support depends on nothing seriously damaging to
Sturgeon coming out of the present Salmond Inquiry. It depends most of all on
Salmond himself not contradicting Sturgeon’s story. If he made it clear that
Sturgeon knew about the allegations against him years earlier, and especially
during the independence campaign, then Sturgeon would be finished, and the
independence cause and SNP prospects set back. Perhaps Salmond thinks he is
young enough to take over from Sturgeon and win the referendum he lost in 2014.
But can a man accused by ten women ever be entirely trusted? Could the SNP
survive the loss of Sturgeon who is more popular with more people than Salmond
ever was and a better politician too? Meanwhile, the list of SNP scandals
continues to grow.
Opposition politicians have one task. Make Sturgeon
resign. She is the SNP’s first and last line of defence. There is nothing else.
