A whiff of Nationalist hypocrisy that’s now so familiar

WITH the General Election only a fortnight away, SNP candidate Dr Lisa Cameron was ecstatic about receiving her first ever standing ovation. The hustings in East Kilbride’s Westwood Parish Church was a stunning success, cementing her position as the frontrunner to become the town’s next MP.

Her carefully choreographed pitch was simple: focus on the SNP’s track record on housing policy in an area in which around 4,000 families were on the council house waiting list.

She boasted of the SNP’s pledge to build 100,000 affordable homes. Later, under questioning, she was quizzed about the sale of housing association properties.

‘We would oppose the sale of housing association homes and we need to make sure we have affordable homes for people within our communities,’ she said.

‘We would end austerity to the most vulnerable people and support them in finding homes...’

After her performance on April 23, Dr Cameron was elected a fortnight later to represent East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow with a 16,527 majority.

But what voters did not know was that Dr Cameron had her own property empire, built by buying former council homes. Many were purchased at rock-bottom prices and she was renting them out for up to £400 a month – far more than the average council rent in East Kilbride.

How many of the hundreds of people languishing on the housing waiting list walked into the polling booths on May 7 and placed an X against her name? How many will now be furious to discover their MP stands accused of such blatant hypocrisy?

For years, Labour-led South Lanarkshire Council lobbied for help from the Scottish Government with the housing crisis. In 2013, it emerged the waiting list for a council home stretched 13 years into the future.

This, the SNP insisted, was why rightto-buy had to go. Abolishing Margaret Thatcher’s popular policy in 2014, Housing Minister Margaret Burgess declared: ‘Ending right-to-buy will preserve valuable social housing (and) increase choice for tenants and those on waiting lists.’

If this sounds familiar, that is because Dr Cameron is not the only MP to have pursued profit from ex-council homes.

Michelle Thomson was suspended from the SNP in September amid a police probe into her mortgage dealings.

From 2009 until last May she was a director of the firm Your Property Shop, which enthused on its website about the financial opportunities of right-tobuy. The company sourced properties, particularly former council homes, for clients to invest in, bypassing estate agents.

Scottish Tory l eader Ruth Davidson said at the time that the ‘hypocrisy’ was staggering.

Mrs Thomson and her husband own 17 properties, worth £1.76million, across Scotland.

Few expect to see her back in the party any time soon, even though she still sits alongside her former colleagues in the Commons.

Speaking at First Minister’s Questions in October, Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale said the issue was a ‘ moral matter’ involving ‘vulnerable people being taken advantage of, as their homes are snapped up at knockdown prices’.

Nicola Sturgeon replied: ‘I am in no doubt whatsoever in my mind that if the allegations – and I stress the word allegations – are proven to be correct, they will represent behaviour that I find completely unacceptable.’

There are allegations, but there are also facts. And the First Minister, to her shame, has refused to condemn her former colleague’s moral failings.

Today’s revelations will once again spark questions about the SNP’s vetting process.

The man in charge is chief executive Peter Murrell, Miss Sturgeon’s husband. While responsible for creating one of Europe’s most formidable election machines, he also ignored warnings in 2011 that SNP candidate Bill Walker was a serial wife-beater. Walker was jailed when his past finally caught up with him, while Mr Murrell survived calls for his resignation.

When all the polls were pointing to a remarkable SNP victory in May, it was assumed the vetting process had been tightened. But no sooner had Mrs Thomson reduced the SNP contingent at Westminster from 56 to 55, than the number shrank to 54.

Natalie McGarry quit the whip at Westminster following claims that up to £30,000 had vanished from the accounts of the Women for Independence group. Now, on Twitter, political enthusiasts openly discuss which MP will be next to go. Privately, senior SNP figures have the same discussions.

SO far, Phil Boswell has survived: the Nationalist MP who campaigned for a crackdown on tax avoidance, yet took out an interest- free £ 18,000 loan to minimise his own tax bill.

Miss Sturgeon has previously demanded a zero- tolerance approach to tax avoidance, so her inaction against Mr Boswell is curious to say the least.

Questions also have to be asked about how Dr Paul Monaghan could ever have been selected as a candidate.

The Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross MP used Twitter to publish slurs on the Royal Family, launched vile smears against opponents, has been accused of anti-Semitism and labelled the Union Flag the ‘butcher’s apron’.

Last year, Labour MP Emily Thornberry was sacked f or sneering at a f amily home draped with England f l ags. Imagine if she had, in the words of Dr Monaghan, said a national flag was ‘unfit to wipe the floor of a pigsty’.

But the SNP does things differently. Mrs Thomson and Miss McGarry were not even disciplined: they withdrew from the whip, triggering an automatic suspension.

The party is, for now, immune to the normal rules of politics. The Forth Road Bridge chaos should have harmed the Scottish Government (which was responsible for removing toll revenue and cutting capital funding by 65 per cent); instead it has increased its lead over Labour in the opinion polls.

Miss Sturgeon had a good 2015, and she will have an even better 2016. In the early hours of May 6, she will surely emerge with a commanding majority.

But sitting behind her will be a new batch of SNP politicians who will have gone through the same vetting process as Mrs Thomson, Miss McGarry, Mr Boswell, Dr Monaghan and Dr Cameron.

While hypocrisy may go unpunished within the SNP, it does not go unpunished at the ballot box. In light of today’s revelations, Scots may well want to think carefully before they cast their vote in May.

What voters did not know was that Dr Cameron had her own property empire, built by buying former council homes