Suspended MP Thomson sends plea to Sturgeon over SNP return

POLITICAL EDITOR

BY TOM GORDON

FORMER SNP MP Michelle Thomson has reached out to Nicola Sturgeon in a bid to return to the party fold, despite an ongoing police investigation into her £1.5 million property empire.

The Edinburgh West MP has written to the First Minister asking for a meeting about how she could retake the SNP whip at Westminster after giving it up last September.

Thomson, 51, surrendered the whip after it emerged her former solicitor, Christopher Hales, was struck off for professional misconduct in 2014 for his part in 13 of her property deals.

The Scottish Solicitors’ Disciplinary Tribunal said Hales “must have been aware that there was a possibility that he was facilitating mortgage fraud, whether or not this actually occurred”.

It said it “must have been glaringly obvious that something was amiss” with some of the transactions involving Thomson or her business M&F Property Solutions.

Police have been investigating for a year though no-one has been charged.

Despite the controversy, Thomson has now mounted a lobbying effort to return to the SNP. In a July 4 email to the party’s 54 MPs, she spoke of her “distress”, and denied her firm had targeted “vulnerable people” to snap up homes at knockdown prices.

Addressing her “dear colleagues”, Thomson said she had offered to engage with the police but “no approach has yet been made to me, or as far as I am aware, to anybody else”.

Boasting of her long roots in the SNP, including touring the Highlands as a teenager with John Swinney and Winnie Ewing, she said: “It has been the loss of the SNP whip that has caused me the most distress. I had no support to manage the media whirlwind and found myself alone and scared.

“I take my responsibilities to my constituency seriously and have carried on doing my best in a professional manner but I must admit there have been many days when I have felt very alone.”

Thomson said her background in financial services and as a musician Former SNP MP Michelle Thomson, pictured with First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, wants to return to the party fold had not prepared her for “the hard political lessons I have had to learn”.

She concluded: “I wrote to Nicola on 18/06/2016 to ask for a meeting but have not yet had a reply. I very much hope to be able to resume as an SNP MP in the near future and I thank you all again for your continued support.”

It is understood Thomson’s supporters at Westminster have also been texting and phoning SNP MPs to lobby on her behalf in recent days.

A party source said: “She has the support of some very senior people and there is a general degree of sympathy for her. But others are not at all happy about her approach and how she’s conducting this PR campaign.”

LibDem MSP Alex Cole-Hamilton, who won the Edinburgh Western seat from the SNP in May after highlighting the controversy around Thomson, said: “This is extraordinary. Michelle Thomson is still the subject of an ongoing police investigation into potentially fraudulent property deals that saw her net tens of thousands of pounds.

“You would have thought her priority would be clearing her name – or, God forbid, standing up for her constituents and doing her job at Westminster – rather than begging SNP colleagues to let her back into the club.”

Asked if Sturgeon had agreed to meet her, Thomson said: “This is an internal matter between myself and the SNP.”

An SNP spokesman said: “Michelle Thomson withdrew from SNP membership, and that remains the position.”