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SNP chief 'threatens' members amid 'stitch up' claims

SNP chief 'threatens' members amid 'stitch up' claims

The National09-05-2025

Toni Giugliano's departure from the Falkirk West selection contest was triggered at the eleventh hour after he was accused of misconduct, believed to be an accusation of bullying.
His rival Gary Bouse will contest the seat at next year's Scottish Parliament election.
But Giugliano's expulsion from the race has sparked claims he was pushed out by SNP chiefs.
Now, the party's national secretary Alex Kerr (below, right) has written to members urging them not to speculate on the circumstances of the case – warning that doing so could make them fall foul of internal rules.
(Image: Supplied)
In an email first reported by The Scottish Sun, Kerr said that he would not get into the reasons for Giugliano, who has ran unsuccessfully for a number of SNP seats in the past, saying only that a 'process was followed'.
He noted that there were local rumours that a campaign had been orchestrated to frustrate Giugliano's campaign but said this was 'a blatant misrepresentation of the facts'.
Kerr said: 'Anyone perpetrating this myth, and seeking to apportion 'blame' on any individual for the outcome of a disciplinary hearing has most likely breached the member code of conduct themselves."
READ MORE: Gillian Mackay launches Scottish Greens leadership bid
The top SNP officer said that 'rules and procedures will not always lead to conclusions we like", and added: 'If anyone cannot accept them then perhaps they need to reconsider whether they can be a member of an organisation that acts for all of its members, and not just for those that we have personal regard.'
A Falkirk SNP source told The Scottish Sun: 'Alex Kerr is lashing out at local members because we won't accept his kangaroo court ruling.
"He's now threatening us with disciplinary action if we don't accept his decision. What on earth has the SNP turned into?
"Kerr's contempt for local members is astounding – this is the sort of stuff we expect from the Tories, not the SNP.
"What on earth was HQ thinking, excluding a candidate who was about to win – did they think we'd all go along with it?
(Image: Toni Giugliano)
"This selection result carries no legal or political weight and it will be challenged.
"They've made a situation a hundred times worse – Alex Kerr needs to recognise this and offer his resignation.'
A source close to Giugliano added: 'Toni was booted out for having a conversation - witnessed by three other people - where he expressed a different point of view. If he'd chosen not to stand this complaint would never have seen the light of day.'
The SNP said: 'Any internal disciplinary matters are dealt with in a manner that is confidential to the parties concerned.'

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EUAN McCOLM: Farage has tickled the tummies of Nationalist voters. He won't win the next election...but he may end SNP's reign
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EUAN McCOLM: Farage has tickled the tummies of Nationalist voters. He won't win the next election...but he may end SNP's reign

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STEPHEN DAISLEY: A report card to make the SNP squirm. Is this REALLY what 'stronger for Scotland' looks like?
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timean hour ago

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STEPHEN DAISLEY: A report card to make the SNP squirm. Is this REALLY what 'stronger for Scotland' looks like?

It was a day of reckoning for the SNP, a rendezvous with a governing record 18 years in the making. The pace of revelations was relentless, as one damning report after another rained down thunk, thunk, thunk on ministers' desks. The statistics were bleak and their mounting volume, accumulating by the hour, meant they could not be spun away. It was all there in grim black and white: death by a thousand bar charts. There was the Crime and Justice Survey, in which the former was more in evidence than the latter. Violent offences were up 73 per cent since 2021. How could this be? Ministers have repeatedly assured us that lawbreaking is on the decline. No wonder it seems that way: eight in ten offences are no longer reported to the police. Eight in ten. House-breaking is on the rise, one in ten of us have been defrauded, and criminal violence among children is climbing, too. Hardly surprising, then, that only 45 per cent of Scots rate the job their local bobbies are doing. The figure used to be 61 per cent before the 2013 shotgun wedding of the old constabularies into Police Scotland. No one doubts the hard, usually thankless, work the rank and file do, but the force's reputation has been tainted by constant gaslighting about crime trends, the decision to stop investigating 'low level' criminality, and the perception that the police have become politicised. Too many tweets investigated, too many pronouns shared, and the scandal of a senior officer attending John Swinney 's anti-Reform summit. Yet nothing has debased public trust in the thin blue line like the SNP's complacency over officer numbers. The Scottish Government has hindered Police Scotland's crime-fighting ability and left the constabulary to take the blame for it. SNP ministers have presided over a collapse in public confidence in the justice system, and who could blame the public when judges are told to jail criminals under 25 only as a last resort? When 56 per cent say punishment doesn't fit the crime, they are delivering their verdict on a soft-touch set-up. The SNP's many inadequacies are more than just a political talking point. In some instances, they are a matter of life and death. Another statistical update that landed yesterday was the quarterly release on drugs deaths. At 308, they were up by one-third on the previous quarter, the highest spike since 2019. It is easy to become inured to the scale of lives lost when you live in Europe's drugs death blackspot, but the human toll is not diminished by indifference. This is a social catastrophe that ought to be as unthinkable as it is unconscionable. For ministers, the misery did not end there. Hospital records laid bare the crisis in emergency care: just 65.5 per cent of patients are being seen within four hours at A&E. The target is 95 per cent. The labour market data was next to take a swing. Not only had unemployment leapt by 14,000, but it had done so as the number of taxpayer-funded Scottish Government staff had ticked up higher still. The coup de grace came with the emissions figures. Remember how ministers ditched some of their key climate targets? Lucky for them that they did because yesterday brought the news that they would have missed them anyway. The government's opponents will seize on all these numbers, but it ought to be ministers seizing on them first. When the cabinet sees this litany of failures, its first instinct should not be how to spin the problem, but how to fix it. One day Scotland will have a government that thinks first of solutions rather than PR strategies but it won't be today. The government we're stuck with, at least for now, met an overwhelming body of evidence with an underwhelming series of excuses. Does it not embarrass them that, after 18 years under their control, Scotland's public services are in this state? Do they feel even a skerrick of shame for having promised so much only to deliver so little? Is this what 'stronger for Scotland' looks like? The SNP is accomplished at politics and abject at policy. It knows how to win power but not how to use it, and so asks to be judged on inputs rather than outcomes. What matters is not that ministers consistently miss their targets but that they introduced the targets in the first place. Government by good intentions might give off positive vibes but it is unpardonable vanity, prioritising the feelings of politicians over the material realities face by ordinary people. There is nothing progressive about promising what you cannot or will not deliver. It is a cruel deception that drives cynicism and frustration deeper into the hearts of the electorate. The SNP thoroughly deserved to squirm as it received its report card in real time, but the people who rely on the police, the NHS and other public services do not deserve the outcomes meted out to them. They will continue, however, as long as this feckless, hopeless shower remain in office.

SNP's day of shame as damning statistics lay bare failures on drugs deaths, violent crime and A&E waiting times
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Daily Mail​

time2 hours ago

  • Daily Mail​

SNP's day of shame as damning statistics lay bare failures on drugs deaths, violent crime and A&E waiting times

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During yesterday's Cabinet meeting, Health Secretary Neil Gray gave an update on 'health performance statistics', while Justice Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville updated on the crime and justice survey. Asked about the level of concern about the figures, a spokesman for the First Minister John Swinney said: 'We want to make progress on all these issues.' Mr Gray said every drug death is a 'tragedy' but added figures showed a year-on-year-fall. He added A&E in Scotland faced similar pressures to those elsewhere in the UK.

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