SNP MSP John Mason is prone to social media car crashes. Mr Mason is however neither a bad person nor indeed a poor public representative.
Not for the first time this deeply religious and socially conservative parliamentarian has ignited outrage and condemnation via his Twitter comments. A poorly judged comparison between winning over Scots to independence and wooing a female like some 18th Century Mr Darcy figure has, fairly, been interpreted as old fashioned and perhaps sexist. Gauche yes but those characterising Mr Mason as some sort of Roosh V rape apologist risk longer term damage to themselves and their agendas by laying down parameters of what is political fair game.
Twitter has a tendency to amplify a tweeter’s traits but the responses to this episode say more about the political climate in post-Referendum Scotland than they do the Glasgow MSP.
I’ve known John Mason for well over a decade. For several years he was single-handedly the SNP opposition on the city council. Obtuse, awkward and clearly of deep faith convictions, many officials and opponents at the City Chambers will recall a pleasant and constructive individual, non-discriminatory in his personal and political dealings and resistant to wild accusations about the Labour administration.
His reaction to his shock victory in the Glasgow East by-election of 2008, when it took the egging on from Alex Salmond for any display of triumphalism, showed a naivety, innocence and clumsiness about Mr Mason, which rather than a virtue often works against him.
And while his views on matters such as abortion and creationism are out of step with much of contemporary secular Scotland he is honest about his faith and has not used politics for any Ulster-style evangelising.
Some in his own party “loathe” Mr Mason’s views. But he is also one of the SNP’s most popular MSPs, polling twice that of Labour last year and immensely popular in an area where many hold traditional values.
Rather than his well-publicised views damaging him or indeed the SNP electorally, Mr Mason has almost doubled his party's share of the vote in his Shettleston constituency in less than a decade.
Last May, in what was once its third safest area in Scotland and held by the party at Westminster since the 1940s Labour even struggled to find a candidate to stand against him. His expenses are amongst the lowest of any MSP, seeking cheaper accommodation when his £25-a-night hotel increased its prices after a refurbishment. Mr Mason also lives in social housing, gives most of his salary to his Baptist church and charitable causes and, certainly while a councillor, did not have a TV.
Crucially, in a parliament where our bright political stars need to be told when to switch themselves on, only twinkling when praising their own ranks, Mr Mason is a genuine independent voice. What value to democracy an SNP MSP prepared to say backbench colleagues are “overly protective of the party line” when supposedly holding Government to account? And whilst I disagree with his cackhanded take on issues such as the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act, he has the courage to engage where other SNP angels fear to tread.
Like Murdo Fraser, another non-clone I’m fond of, Mr Mason has been forced into the trenches through a disregard for Twitter norms. But the intolerance here is more those calling for his head and infusing politics with those of the student union than it is Mr Mason’s.
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