AN SNP veteran suspended by the party over homophobic and misogynist remarks has quit the organisation, accusing it of "McMafia tactics".

Just weeks after bidding for a place on the party's ruling body Andy Doig has walked after being de-selected as a candidate.

Mr Doig was suspended last year after sending a “spoof press release” that called a female Yes campaigner “seriously stacked” and contained a crude sexual allusion to gay finance secretary Derek Mackay.

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The Herald understands this was a major factor in his de-selection.

But the deputy leader of Renfrewshire's SNP group and former Assistant National Secretary told a local newspaper there had been a campaign to remove him starting with what he described as "the night of the long sgian dubhs".

The SNP said that its National Executive Committee "considered that Mr Doig was not a fit and proper person to represent the SNP at the coming election".

The 55-year-old, who joined the party in 1979, will see out the rest of the current council term as an independent. His wife Audrey did however passed party vetting.

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Mr Doig said: "I am sick of the McMafia tactics being used against me by the party I used to love.

"I will now sit on Renfrewshire Council as an Independent councillor and will continue to represent them with the same dedication, vigour and commitment as ever.

"It is in the public domain that, in a lapse of judgement, I composed a satirical spoof email in 2015, lampooning other SNP members. I apologised for this, both publicly and, to most of those mentioned in the email, privately.

"The Oxford Dictionary defines satire as 'the use of humor, irony, exaggeration or ridicule to expose and criticise people's stupidity, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues'.

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"A year ago, the SNP Appeals Committee found I was guilty of a lapse of judgement but, crucially, found I personally was not homophobic or misogynistic, that I had not composed the spoof email with malice and that I did not intend it to be made public.

"Right back to 2015, the SNP leadership wanted to get me in a night of the long sgian dubhs."

Mr Doig also told the Paisley Gazette: "On February 1, I attended an appeal meeting in SNP HQ, with three MSPs in attendance.

"Following a lengthy discussion, the Appeals Committee of the NEC found that my appeal against being deselected as a council candidate was upheld.

"Yet on February 7, the National Secretary, Dr Angus MacLeod, and the rest of the NEC overturned their decision.

"I am sure I will not be alone in scenting a vendetta here.

"In all conscience, I cannot remain within a party which is happy to use private emails to smear me and which now operates in such an authoritarian manner."

A founder member of the Young Scottish Nationalists in 1981, he was also prominent in the SNP's left-wing '79 Group' , an unsuccessful Westminister candidate on four occasions and failed to enter Holyrood twice.