SNP Hate-Finder General’s new victim

If James Dornan did not exist, Mr Steerpike would surely invent him, for the SNP MSP for Glasgow Cathcart is so fantastically absurd that he supplies endless (and endlessly entertaining) copy. Dornan is in the news again, this time for pronouncing that the BBC’s Sarah Smith imagined the abuse and misogyny she experienced while covering Scottish politics.

During her tenure as the Beeb’s Scotland Editor, Smith was turned into a hate figure by cybernats, the digital foot soldiers of Scottish nationalism who target opposition politicians, journalists and anyone else out of step with Nicola Sturgeon’s inclusive, progressive Scotland. Smith, who is heading to the US to become the BBC North America Editor, told an interviewer it would be a ‘relief’ to leave behind the Scotland beat and ‘the criticism, bile and hatred’ that came with it.

Smith revealed that people would ‘roll their car windows down to ask me, “What f***ing lies you’re going to be telling on TV tonight, you f***ing lying bitch?”’ She also complained of ‘the misogynistic idea that I can’t have any of my own thoughts’ because her father was the late Labour leader John Smith.