The SNP exodus continues. Only hours after Lisa Cameron MP defected to the Tories, nationalist councillor Kairin van Sweeden has now quit too after being accused of racism. The spat broke out with Labour colleague Deena Tissera after van Sweeden suggested her fellow councillor was unaware of the bedroom tax as, er, a ‘new Scot’. Blood and soil nationalism? So much for progressive…
Tissera claims that the jibe was used in the context of suggesting she ‘had just come off a boat’, penning a furious letter to First Minister Humza Yousaf and his chief executive and former spin doctor Murray Foote. The comments ‘shocked me’, wrote the Labour representative, ‘and shocked the council’:
The innuendo of her comments were that I had just come off the boat and as a new Scot – her words not mine – I am not as Scottish as others and I did not understand Scotland like her and the SNP group, this being despite the SNP council leader being of French dissent and myself holding a United Kingdom passport.
So much for an entente cordiale.
Van Sweeden later apologised for her ‘clumsy’ comments while Yousaf said it spoke to ‘the unconscious bias and discrimination that people hold and we all have to challenge ourselves’. ‘We all have it,’ he added.
Just coincidence then it always seems to be the SNP caught up in these sorts of rows…
Comments