A forgettable career and the shaming of Margaret Covid

ONE of the bitter ironies of Margaret Ferrier’s breathtaking breach of coronavirus rules is that it might be the first thing she has done as an MP to gain a public profile. If she does eventually see sense and stand down, she will be remembered by most only as the politician who put lives at risk by taking a 400-mile train journey after testing positive for coronavirus.

A slip of the tongue by Nicola Sturgeon yesterday perhaps said it all, when she accidentally referred to the MP now suspended by the SNP as ‘Margaret Covid’.

While Miss Ferrier may have a low profile, it looks like her actions could further widen animosity and divisions within the SNP, and fatally undermine the First Minister’s public messaging about sticking to the rules to avoid a second wave of coronavirus running out of control.

Miss Ferrier, for her part, is thought to be self-isolating – finally – at her Lanarkshire home.

It is not known if her daughter Caitlin Mulreany, a 28-year- old school teacher, is with her.

Miss Ferrier only entered politics at the age of 54 in 2015 when she ousted Labour MP Tom Greatrex in Rutherglen and Hamilton West.

One of the so-called SNP ‘56’, the former Labour Party member claimed she could not remember a time when she did not support independence.

In an interview with the Rutherglen Reformer shortly after becoming an MP, she referred to spending t wo years of her childhood in Spain, and having to correct people who called her English.

‘I wasn’t English, I was Scottish, so I always had that Scottish identity, even from the age of 12,’ she said.

Before becoming an MP, she had worked as a commercial sales manager for a manufacturing construction company in Motherwell.

Always interested in politics, she had been a member of Amnesty International in her twenties.

She did not join the Rutherglen branch of the SNP until 2011 and said the deciding factor was seeing then First Minister Alex Salmond in a TV debate at Perth Concert Hall, where she spoke to him afterwards.

By 2013, she had become a candidate in council elections, before standing for Westminster in 2015.

Her surprise victory over Mr Greatrex, a member of Labour’s Shadow Cabinet, saw her overturn a majority of 21,002 – one of the largest in the UK.

In her maiden speech, she said: ‘Why were we elected? Because we listened to the people of our nation and we will continue to listen to them.’

Her political career seemed to have been cut short two years later, when she was ousted by Labour in the snap general election called by Theresa May.

But she won the seat back from Labour’ s Ged Kill en last December.

She has not rebelled against her party in the current term and was a popular figure among her colleagues. However, that has quickly changed following her actions of the past week.

According to her own account, she began experiencing coronavirus symptoms last Saturday afternoon and took a test that day.

Her Twitter feed indicates that she may have visited a gym, a shop and a beauty salon in Glasgow on the same day.

Although the guidelines state that people should self-isolate, she says she was feeling better by Monday and decided to take a train to London and turned up in t he House of Commons as planned.

At 7.15pm on Monday, she took part in a Commons debate on coronavirus, where she began her contribution by ‘paying tribute to all NHS key workers and volunteers in my constituency for their care and commitment over the past seven months’.

The same evening, she said she received confirmation that her Covid test was positive.

Rather than going into a strict quarantine as rules require, she instead opted to travel home by train on Tuesday morning – which she now admits was wrong.

Her colleagues knew she had travelled home, but thought this was for family reasons.

According to the SNP, its Westminster chief whip, Patrick Grady, was informed of the positive test result only on Wednesday. It was understood that she had taken the test at home on Tuesday and had been isolating for 24 hours until she got the result.

After learning of the positive test, the SNP informed the Commons authorities on Wednesday.

The Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, yesterday branded her actions ‘reckless’ and said the House had been ‘put at risk’.

The SNP’s Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, yesterday said he was only made aware of the test result on Thursday morning.

HE asked Mr Grady to ‘put a number of questions’ to Miss Ferrier on the timeline of her movements and said it was only on Thursday afternoon he became aware of the full circumstances.

Miss Sturgeon was not informed until shortly after First Minister’s Questions on Thursday.

The SNP only announced Miss Ferrier had been suspended some time after the MP issued her statement on Thursday evening.

Miss Sturgeon yesterday reacted angrily to questions about why the MP had not been expelled and said that ‘due process’ needed to be followed.

It is understood the only body with the power to expel a party member is the member conduct committee. A complaint would need to be made first, via the national secretary, which must then be upheld prior to the committee deciding on a sanction.

Even if she is expelled from the SNP, the party cannot remove Miss Ferrier as an MP. However, her constituents will be able to act if she is suspended from the House for 14 days following the parliamentary standards probe. A byelection could then be called under the Recall of MPs Act if 10 per cent of constituents vote for this.

Miss Ferrier’s career hangs in the balance – and she has written herself i nto the SNP history books in a way she would never have wanted.