THE SNP has been accused of posturing over Brexit after The Herald revealed it spent barely £90,000 campaigning for a Remain vote in the EU referendum.
The opposition claimed the figure, on a par with SNP by-election spending, showed the Nationalists “barely lifted a finger" on the issue, despite denouncing Brexit ever since.
Electoral Commission figures show the SNP spent £90,830 in the EU referendum campaign, against a spending limit of £700,000.
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The figure was less than the party spent in the 2008 byelection for the Westminster seat of Glenrothes (£98,597), and only slightly higher than its spending in Glasgow East the same year (£85,540) and the Holyrood Aberdeen Donside by-election of 2013 (£80,606).
Only the SNP and the Scottish Greens registered to campaign exclusively in Scotland, though other parties did campaign UK-wide.
Across the UK, the SNP was outspent on the Leave side by the JD Wetherspoon pub chain (£94,585) and Sun newspaper (£96,898), and on the Remain side by several unions, including the CWU (£93,363), TUC (£98,184), USDAW (£104,190), and Unite (£140,311).
Tory MSP Murdo Fraser said: “The SNP is behaving like leaving the EU is the end of the world for Scotland. But the party’s pitiful investment in the campaign tells another story completely.
“The SNP is not poor, yet it treated the EU referendum like it was a council by-election.”
Labour MSP Lewis Macdonald said: "The Nationalists barely lifted a finger during the EU referendum but now want to take advantage of Brexit by forcing another independence referendum on the people of Scotland. The Labour Party across the whole of the UK campaigned harder than any other party to secure our place in the EU."
Scottish LibDem leader Willie Rennie added: "That the SNP would spend more on a parliamentary by-election that this national referendum reveals the low priority that they gave the referendum. They hardly lifted a finger during the referendum.”
The SNP demanded other parties publish their spending, and pointed out the result in Scotland had been 62-38 in favour of Remain.
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MSP Bill Kidd said: “Given the over-the-top language used by the opposition, I expect that they'll each have spent many times what the SNP did – otherwise we'll know that this was political opportunism and hypocrisy of the worst kind.”
Figures for parties spending more than £250,000 are due out in the New Year.
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