Nationalist MEP calls for party action to tackle online abuse

A senior nationalist MEP has called for a crackdown on online abuse as part of a drive to defuse the tribalism of politics in Scotland.

Alyn Smith says SNP members should not be allowed to have anonymous accounts on social media forums, such as Twitter, which are then used to direct abuse at political opponents and urged other parties to follow suit.

Mr Smith is calling on his party to create a code of conduct for social media that all members sign up to.

“I would like to see a specific code of conduct in my own party with four or five simple points that everyone agrees on, including a ban on the kind ofanonymousaccountswhich seem to enable people to be so unpleasant,” he said yesterday.

“I also think all the parties, either through their leaders or their chief executives, could sign some kind of code of online decency. As an outgay pro-european nationalist I am no stranger to abuse but I am fed up of whataboutery from one side or another.”

Two newly-elected Conservative councillors – Alastair Majury and Robert Davies – were suspended by the party earlier this year over abusive sent from anonymous Twitter accounts.

And during the 2015 general election campaign, SNP candidate Neil Hay was named as the person behind the abusive Paco Mcsheepie Twitter account. He said there was a widespread attitude that “everything my team says is correct and anything your team says is a cynical distortion of the truth”.

And he added: “If the extremists and blowhards polarise discussion and drive regular folks offline, we all lose.

“Debate, by all means, ridicule, certainly, but how about all of Scotland’s politicians stop trying to divide the world into goodies and baddies and urge our supporters to do likewise?”

The move won the support of political rivals yesterday.

A spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives said: “Alyn Smith is absolutely right that we need to see a crackdown on those who post vile the vile insults we see all too regularly on social media.

“There is no place for those cowards in Scottish politics who hide their identity behind a fake, abusive profile. We all have to acknowledge that, while ‘cybernats’ may have been the trailblazers, all parties have problems of this type.”

A Labour spokesman said: “All forms of abuse are unacceptable, including online abuse.”