End the vile abuse and hollow apologies

OUR exposé of the orchestrated hate campaign that made what turned out to be the final few months of Charles Kennedy’s life such a misery was met with howls of denial f r om SNP supporters.

It was, they claimed, utterly untrue; a vicious, axe-grinding calumny. One prominent Nationalist i nsisted the campaign amounted to no more than a few ‘abusive messages’ on Twitter ‘such as we all get from time to time’.

The resignation of Brian Smith as convener of the SNP Skye and Lochalsh branch brings the apologists’ house of cards crashing down. Mr Smith was responsible for at least 115 tweets to Mr Kennedy between January and May as well as countless Facebook messages.

He called the fragile former Lib Dem leader an ‘arch Quisling’ and a ‘drunken slob’ and enquired if he had ‘a problem’ that affected his voting record in Westminster.

He has accepted culpability for his unacceptable behaviour and has gone. But what of Ian Blackford, who has replaced Mr Kennedy as an MP?

He insists he knew nothing of Mr Smith’s activities and, when made aware of what had been going on apparently behind his back and outwith his knowledge, insisted Mr Smith had to go.

Yet the pair followed each other on Facebook and on Twitter. Mr Blackford was so close to Mr Smith, he enthused about a Skye SNP Burns supper ‘ presided over by the inimitable Brian Smith’. So how could he have been unaware of so much bile for so long?

And the family of the late Mr Kennedy are under no illusion about the role of Mr Blackford in all this. They knew well Mr Kennedy’s fury at the despicable and dirty campaign he ran.

So incensed are they at Mr Blackford popping up to offer pious platitudes after the death that they have politely but firmly asked him to stay away from today’s funeral.

This tawdry affair has deep implications for Scottish politics which have been tainted and coarsened by the nastiness that became a hallmark of the independence referendum debate.

Yes, there have been examples of unacceptable personal abuse on all sides.

But the hounding of Charles Kennedy in his last weeks marks a nadir.

Here was a flawed but fundamentally decent man forced to confront bitter personal attacks that had nothing to do with his politics.

Yes, much of the nastiness was from the hands of low-grade activists, some of whom may not even be bona fide party members, with access to a computer and too much time on their hands. But the overall tone was set by some very senior people in the SNP.

Previously Alex Salmond and now First Minister Nicola Sturgeon have thus far brushed off the obnoxious tactics of the Cybernats with banalities about raising the tone of debate and expressions of mild disapproval of personal attacks ‘from all sides’.

The Kennedy affair must be a watershed. The SNP have to thoroughly probe what occurred – the wider public deserve nothing less.

Those responsible for reprehensible abuse cannot go unpunished, cannot hide behind the idiocy of the ‘others-dothis-too’ argument.

The SNP hierarchy can no longer pretend that it has no role in preventing a repeat of this horrible affair. And the Honourable Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber cannot maintain the fiction that he has anything other than a pivotal role in getting to the truth of how a good man was bedevilled in a way unacceptable in modern politics.