TIM Farron has hit out at the “unthinking monoculture” of the SNP at Westminster, insisting Nationalist MPs’ lack of independence was not very Scottish.
The Liberal Democrat leader, who will hit the Holyrood campaign trail today in Edinburgh, believing his party are "reasonably confident of going forward in Scotland", commented on what he regarded as the SNP’s rigid uniformity of thought.
Before the General Election, the party, in a behind-closed doors decision at its conference, banned its MPs from criticising the leadership line with new standing orders stating all had to "accept that no member shall within or outwith the parliament publicly criticise a group decision, policy or another member of the group". The move was passed overwhelmingly by conference delegates.
It was said at the time the move was made in anticipation of getting a large tranche of new MPs at the 2015 General Election but Labour branded it “Stalinist”.
Mr Farron said: “I know some SNP MPs, some are very nice people, who I would count as friends, so I’m not being deliberately horrific about them; however, I’ve never heard or witnessed a single one of them utter an independent thought. That’s quite terrifying really.
“As a northerner, who thinks, culturally, I’ve got more in common with Scotland than I have with this part of the world(Westminster), that’s not very Scottish.”
The party leader, noting how some of the SNP’s new members came from a “different place than the older guard in the SNP…from a slightly more hopeful place, a better society, and what have you,” said: “It jars with those people that you have such a centralising and unified and unthinking monoculture in the party, which is sad.
“Of course, you don’t want your party to be split and riven but a party without the odd maverick is not a party I would trust.”
The Cumbrian MP also suggested it was unhealthy for democracy to have the SNP running a “one-party state” north of the border and the Conservatives with a “stranglehold on power” south of the border.
“Any reasonable person who values fairness and balance, democracy and good government will be terrified at that concentration of power in the hands of two parties, who are avowed enemies and yet are each other’s best asset.
“Because the lesson of May 2015 appears to be that what you really need to win an election is to have a good quality bogeyman. They were each other’s bogeyman and they worked a treat for one another,” declared Mr Farron.
He stressed he was not saying the two parties were insincere in their opposition to one another but they clearly had a “symbiotic relationship, which benefits both the Tories and the Nationalists”.
An SNP spokesman said: ''Mr Farron's party was wiped off the map on mainland Scotland in the 2015 election because it was joined at the hip to the Tories on cuts and the bedroom tax.
"Mr Farron should focus on the real issues concerning families and communities across Scotland and the LibDems should concentrate on acting like a real opposition.''
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