It’s a day ending in ‘y’ which means that a political party somewhere is having candidate drama. This time it’s Sir Keir Starmer’s lefty Labour lot, who have had to drop their Aberdeenshire North and Moray East candidate over controversial social media posts about Russia and antisemitism. Oh dear…
Andy Brown shared contentious posts about the 2018 Salisbury poisonings, in which the nerve agent Novichok was used in an attempt to take the lives of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. The links shared by the ex-Labour candidate raised doubts about Putin’s involvement in the attack and suggested that the life-threatening nerve agent did not come from Russia. Another post shared by Brown suggested that crucial information about the poisonings was hidden by then-prime minister Theresa May. And the former Labour candidate was also found to have shared a post dismissing allegations of antisemitism again the Labour party, in which a historian is quoted suggesting Jewish voters in the UK were instead frustrated by Jeremy Corbyn’s pro-Palestine sentiments.
Just hours after Brown’s rather strange social media use was uncovered by the Press and Journal, the Labour party suspended their Aberdeenshire candidate. But since the nomination deadline has passed, the decision means the party is not able to swap in another candidate for the seat. What a mess…
It’s not the only scandal to befall the Moray East constituency, however. Over the last fortnight, Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross found himself in a fix after he announced he would be contesting the new seat as the candidate who had been expected to stand, David Duguid, was ill. But after receiving immense backlash both within and outside of his party – including from Duguid himself – the Tory MSP then announced that he would be resigning as leader of the Scottish group. In a bizarre twist, he said he would resign his MSP post if he was successful this general election – and keep his Holyrood job if he wasn’t. Alright for some…
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