NICOLA Sturgeon is presiding over a “fundamentally undemocratic” SNP that risks alienating parts of the wider Yes movement, one of her former cabinet colleagues has said.

In a scathing critique, Kenny MacAskill said the SNP leader had created a “presidential regime” involving her husband, the SNP chief executive Peter Murrell.

The former Justice Secretary, who quit the cabinet when Ms Sturgeon became First Minister in 2014, also said his party had “never been more centralised” in its 84-year history.

He said Ms Sturgeon was creating a “New SNP” - a clear echo of New Labour under Tony Blair - that was more interested in the middle-class than the working-class.

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“There are some now in the New SNP who seem oblivious to what a housing scheme is and are unrecognised in the deprived areas they represent,” he said.

Writing in the Scotsman newspaper, Mr Macaskill also criticised last week’s SNP Growth Commission report which was ordered and defended by Ms Sturgeon.

The report has been attacked by some on the Left of the Yes movement, particularly over its plan to keep the pound and prioritise deficit reduction over public spending in the first decade of an independent Scotland.

One of Alex Salmond's former special advisers in government, Alex Bell, today called the report an arrogant "suicide note".

Labour said the splits in the SNP were "absolutely extraordinary".

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Mr MacAskill said talk of a serious split in the independence movement over the report was “wishful thinking by Unionist opponents”, and the common goal of a Yes vote remained.

He said: “It’s a document, not tablets of stone handed down from Moses and many activists for the wider cause will simply choose to ignore it.”

He also welcomed some aspects of the report, including the debate on currency and greater immigration, and said some abuse sparked by the report had been “unedifying” and “puerile”.

However he said “some of the vocabulary used and the acceptance of so many aspects of neo-liberal doctrine are steps too far for me”, and warned it let down the working class.

On the wider issue of Ms Sturgeon’s leadership, he said she had made the SNP appear left-wing on social issues, such as gender and sexuality, rather than on economics.

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“The issue of class or, more exactly, inequality has been tackled far less vigorously and receives far less profile,” he said, despite attempts to shore up the welfare state.

He said: “The SNP has never been larger in terms of members and influence, yet ironically it has never been more centralised. The presidential regime under Nicola Sturgeon with appointees and even her husband in key positions is fundamentally undemocratic.

“That the report appears to being restricted in how it can be debated or even amended doesn’t augur well.

It’s time the party opened up and not just in the debate on this issue.

“Both those aspects cause the party some difficulties and rifts with the wider movement might well increase."

Although SNP members will debate the Growth Commission report at three National Assemblies over the summer, these will not include votes.

Meanwhile SNP ministers have said they will decide which ideas for economic growth in the report will be taken forward by the Scottish Government.

READ MORE: Just who is Peter Murrell?

Mr MacAskill concluded: “The party has to be wary of alienating those who’ll deliver the vote in the housing schemes and are far from enamoured by it.

“There are some now in the New SNP who seem oblivious to what a housing scheme is and are unrecognised in the deprived areas they represent. The people who’ll lead the independence campaign there shouldn’t be derided but respected.”

Mr Bell said the Growth Commission report was intended to con voters into thinking the 2013 White Paper had been updated, distract Nationalists from the lack of a second independence referendum, and “smuggle a pro-business agenda into the next Holyrood session”.

Writing in the Courier newspaper, he said Commission chair Andrew Wilson knew Scots had no great appetite for independence.

He said: “This Growth Commission gives the party permission to move to the right.

“It is suicide because there is no referendum and no means to trigger one.

“Meanwhile the membership have been taken for fools, told all the emotional effort in defending the last argument was pointless.

“Labour will pick up disillusioned lefties who now can see that welfare and the NHS won’t be any better after Indy, and the Tories are waiting to welcome back centrist Conservatives who drifted to the Nats.

“Both will do well. They have been given all the evidence they need to defeat the SNP from, of all places, the SNP.”

Labour MSP Jackie Ballie said: "The splits emerging in the SNP are absolutely extraordinary.

“Nicola Sturgeon’s primary political purpose has been to create division – but she presumably did not envisage creating such division in her own ranks.

“Nicola Sturgeon promised a growth commission, but what the people of Scotland got was a cuts commission, outlining a plan to continue the misery of austerity for decades to come. It is simply shocking.

“The people of Scotland – and it seems even many in the SNP itself – do not need or want another referendum." 

The SNP has been asked for comment.