THE SNP is spring cleaning. The party this week updated its rolling register of people approved as council candidates in May, taking the total above 600. But more intriguing was who was missing. Those who had failed vetting and been de-selected included several councillors.
Clearing out deadwood and refreshing the offer to voters before an election is common to all parties. But the SNP seems to have a harder time than most wielding the axe.
Four of those who didn’t make the list are councillors in North Lanarkshire. There are two SNP factions viciously scrapping for power in the so-called “Monklands McMafia” feud. The details are byzantine, but the upshot is three of the “McMafia” clan failed vetting – Michael and Agnes Coyle and Dr Imtiaz Majid – as did one from the rival group, David Baird. They can still appeal.
What the episode highlights is the damagingly incestuous nature of politics. Almost everyone in the McMafia row is linked by blood or money to another politician. For example, Mr Coyle works for Airdrie & Shotts MSP Alex Neil as well as the area’s MP, Neil Gray, who also used to work for Mr Neil. Mr and Mrs Coyle’s daughter, another local councillor, works for Mr Neil’s old mate Richard Lyle, the MSP for Uddingston & Bellshill, whose daughter is also an SNP councillor.
Mr Neil backed Dr Majid as a Westminster candidate in 2015. Nicola Sturgeon knows him well. As does Coatbridge MSP Fulton MacGregor, who helped him become convener of the local branch just before it was suspended for being a toxic mess. When Dr Majid didn’t get the candidacy, it was taken by Phil Boswell, now the Coatbridge MP. Mr Baird used to campaign for Mr Boswell. Another of Mr Boswell’s former employees, also a councillor, is currently suing one of Mr Lyle’s employees for £100,000 in a defamation case. And on and on and on it goes.
The Hatfields and McCoys had nothing on this lot. For years, complaints went into SNP HQ about bullying and a lack of internal democracy in North Lanarkshire. Ms Sturgeon also received very specific accusations. Little was done. An internal inquiry was held but its findings remain secret. Then a private detective was asked to sniff around. His report is a mystery too. I have a bulging file of fruitless letters to the SNP’s chief executive Peter Murrell and chief clerk Ian McCann which reek of activists’ frustration.
That’s the thing with a mess like the McMafia. The players are so tightly entwined you can’t surgically extract the worst ones. Pull a thread and who knows what will unravel. So inertia prevailed and the bad behaviour got worse, until now the party is being forced to act - and even then not in a comprehensive fashion.
No party rushes to wash its dirty laundry in public, of course. Cover-ups and muddled half-solutions are standard. But as one senior nationalist told me, the SNP is compromised in a particular way. It cannot sluice out the nepotism or overhaul its governance because of the apex of the party. Mr Murrell, after all, is married to Ms Sturgeon, whose mum used to be SNP provost of North Ayrshire, and whose dad is an approved candidate. Even Mr McCann is married to one of Ms Sturgeon’s special advisers. It’s all happy families.
“It comes from the top,” said my source. “There’s no investment in proper governance because it’s all too close to home. It’s February and we haven’t got candidates selected yet because of HQ. It’s shocking.”
Consider also the serial blunders of Glasgow Shettleson MSP John Mason. Ms Sturgeon this week apologised after he said the IRA killers of three Scottish soldiers might be seen as “freedom fighters”. Will he be deselected? I doubt it. His seat is the Holyrood version of Westminster’s Glasgow East. Its MP is former SNP member Natalie McGarry, who has been charged with embezzlement. Daughter of a councillor, niece of former Presiding Officer Tricia Marwick, Ms McGarry is another example of how parties promote and protect their own. The party does not want to shed an MSP and MP in the same seat. To lose one parliamentarian may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
There are reports of mini-McMafias also germinating in Ayrshire, West Dunbartonshire and Dundee. It could take a while, but with the party heading for gains countrywide, the elections this spring elections will reveal what other poisoned fruit SNP HQ has failed to weed out.
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