It’s the end of an era. Ian Blackford has this week announced he will be standing down as an MP at the next election. Not quite making it to a decade in the Commons, the MP for Ross, Skye and Lochaber released a 659-word article about his resignation that, er, didn’t quite manage to explain the reasons for his resignation. No matter. Mr S can list a number of reasons why Blackford might have been particularly keen to leave his role…
The Patrick Grady fiasco
Cast your mind back to last year when Blackford ordered his MPs to lend their support to a sex pest in their own party. Back when he was Westminster leader of the SNP group, Blackford told SNP MPs to give Patrick Grady their ‘absolute full support’ – only 15 minutes after their then Chief Whip had been suspended from parliament for inappropriately touching a colleague 17 years his junior at a social event.
Charges of duplicity were levelled at Blackford when it emerged that he had emailed Grady’s victim two days later with assurances he would take a ‘zero tolerance approach to inappropriate behaviour’. Nothing like a hypocrite, eh?
The smearing of Charles Kennedy
Let’s rewind the clock back to May 2015 when Blackford was first elected to parliament, unseating former Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy in the process. Less than a month later Kennedy was dead after a long battle with alcoholism. Blackford was accused of instigating a particularly loathsome campaign against Kennedy which boasted the slogan of ‘Where’s Charlie?’
This led to the convenor of the SNP’s Skye branch, one certain Brian Smith, musing online whether Kennedy had ‘a “problem” that stops you going to Westminster?’ In fact, Kennedy was grieving his parents, trying to support his family and also fighting a terrible disease. But the Cybernats had no sympathy, prompting endless pile ons. One of Kennedy’s staffers ended up having to spend virtually all their time deleting social media abuse. Nationalists? Graceless? Never…
Blackford’s democracy hypocrisy
Blackford spent much of his time in parliament unsuccessfully trying to overturn the results of successive referenda on Scexit and Brexit. After Nicola Sturgeon announced her plans to hold a second vote on Scottish independence in late 2022, Blackford took to the Commons floor to round on the Tories for their lack of enthusiasm about the prospect. The SNP MP accused them of fearing democracy during a particularly heated PMQs session.
Not missing a trick, former Brexit party MEP Martin Daubney hit back on Twitter:
‘“Why is the UK government scared of democracy?” Says Ian Blackford MP who tried – and failed, for four years – to cancel Brexit, the biggest democratic vote in British parliamentary history.’
Ouch.
Blackford’s ousting
After growing unhappy with Blackford’s leadership, SNP backbenchers started plotting his demise. In March 2022, a first unsuccessful coup was staged by Alyn Smith and Stewart McDonald – though all three politicians deny this ever happened. Then in November a second attempt came, this time from a younger member of the group, MP for Aberdeen South, Stephen Flynn. Though the challenge was again defeated, it was clear all was not well at the heart of the Westminster group. Mr S understands MPs were privately briefing they would be happy with ‘anyone but Blackford’.
Before a third attempt was mounted, Blackford realised the game was up. Resigning in December, just a week before the group’s AGM, the SNP veteran stated the time was right for ‘fresh leadership’. Talk about finally accepting a result…
The SNP civil war
It’s hardly surprising that the new Westminster leader and his predecessor didn’t see eye to eye after Stephen Flynn ousted Blackford from his role. But the infighting didn’t stay behind closed doors for long. The SNP’s auditor fiasco earlier this year triggered a full-blown fallout that spread across the airwaves. Flynn told the BBC that his party was struggling to find new accountants, claiming that he had not been made aware of his party’s lack of accountants until February 2023, two whole months after he took over.
Blackford came out swinging. He retorted to the BBC that his deputy Kirsten Oswald had passed a ‘full and detailed briefing’ of events to his successor. He even went so far as to say that Flynn had assured him new auditors were in place. Questioned about it at a think tank event, Flynn couldn’t quite give a straight answer on the whole affair. Dirty laundry aired, Flynn and Blackford decided the best way to diffuse the situation would be a staged photo shoot on the banks of the Thames. ‘Cringe’ doesn’t quite cut it.
Enjoy a quiet retirement Ian. In the immortal words of Clement Attlee ‘a period of silence on your part would be welcome’…
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