Neil Mackay: SNP’s thin-skinned sense of entitlement will be its undoing

That, however, doesn’t stop the party, its councillors and its online army from attacking anyone attempting to bring the SNP to task for its failures.

When citizens call the SNP out for the filthy mess of Glasgow, the response is to either abuse or gaslight. Anonymous, faceless SNP trolls go for critics. Voters get called ‘shills’, ‘lickspittles’, and ‘a******s’ – and much worse.

READ MORE: State of Glasgow shames city

Insults are bad enough – but every political party has its thuggish band ready to pounce on perceived ‘enemies’. What really offends is the behaviour of SNP councillors.

They deny with absolute conviction the evidence which Glasgow voters see before them. Some have even taken to social media to do so. Rhiannon Spear said: “I completely disagree that the city is filthy.”

Spear says she is, “tired of reading the same recycled article about Glasgow”.

Glaswegians are tired of living in a midden – but at least somebody is recycling something because it’s certainly not trash piled high in the streets.

Spears is only copying her boss, however. Glasgow City Council leader Susan Aitken has stated straight faced to voters: “I don’t believe the streets are filthy”. It would be comic – if it weren’t so damn insulting and rats weren’t running around.

The party, its supporters and elected councillors are engaged in a wilful campaign of disinformation. While councillors deny there’s any problem with rubbish, the SNP’s online army foist the blame onto ordinary Glaswegians. We’re manky litter louts, it seems, all of us.

Evidently, there’s a problem with littering in Glasgow, just as there’s a problem with littering in every city – and all citizens have a duty to keep their neighbourhoods clean. Litter louts should get the short, sharp shock of hefty fines. Maybe the council’s Community Enforcement Officers should be collaring more of them, then?

READ MORE: The Glasgow vision

However, the vast majority of Glasgow's citizens aren’t fly tipping mattresses and chucking trash about – we just have to look at garbage every day, and understandably we expect the council to do its job and clean up.

But Glasgow councillors have bigger fish to fry apparently. Doing the day job seems beneath them when they’ve good causes to pretend to champion, and bandwagons to jump.

There’s something utterly sinister about elected politicians who feel they can tell the very people who voted them into office, and pay their wages, that what they’re seeing with their own eyes is wrong. That takes a certain level of brass neck and shamelessness. It’s almost abusive. If someone tells you they’re unhappy with something you’re responsible for, and you tell that person they’re wrong – that this issue isn’t real, implying that they’re a liar – then what else can that be called but psychological abuse?

The problem is, that this gaslighting tactic is utterly naive. A lot of low-ranking SNP types think they’re awfully clever as they hopped onto the coat-tails of the party to get a taste of power. Unfortunately for them, they aren’t. Glaswegians don’t buy the lies for a moment.

On social media, there’s a torrent of complaint and anger from ordinary Glaswegians over the SNP’s failure to tackle the filthy mess of the city. One rather witty sort suggested that Glasgow citizens pick up all the trash in their neighbourhoods and then converge en masse to dump the rubbish on the doorstep of the City Chambers. It sounds a very wise and quite effective notion in terms of people power.

This isn’t just an issue about Glasgow and trash, though. This local matter speaks of a wider malaise within the SNP. The party, its members, supporters and elected representatives, have a dangerously thin-skinned sense of entitlement. There’s a belief among them that it’s their right to run Scotland, and how dare anyone question the party.

This poison runs through the SNP from the issue of Glasgow and its rubbish problem, all the way to national government and its endless failures over key domestic policy. Any criticism is labelled concocted because the critic is opposed to independence (I support independence, incidentally), or it’s just an exercise in ‘SNPBad’ – a slogan the nationalists’ online brigade bray like sheep every time the party comes under scrutiny.

This rather creepy thin-skinned sense of entitlement will either be the undoing of the party or Scotland.

If this type of SNP member had a brain in their head then they would accept criticism and simply say, ‘Yes, got you on that, we should do better and we will’. That’s one hell of a way to wrong-foot critics.

SNP members might be wiser to question their own party – in a bid to make it do better. You can back a political party and still criticise it, you know. In fact, that’s really good for democracy. It means your party will work harder, improve, and more people will vote for it. The result? SNP members get their way more.

But you don’t do that when you’re entitled to rule and when you’re clearly above all criticism. To leave failings within one’s own camp unscrutinised – particularly when those failures stare you in the face – is just morally wrong.

If Scotland’s governing party cannot learn to take criticism and improve then it’s frankly no better than the Tories in England, and it will lead Scotland on the same rotten road – ruling disastrously through a belief that they’re right and everyone else is wrong.

One matter is clear though: the utter filthy mess of Glasgow is a real soft spot with SNP politicians in the city. They really don’t like the truth. That’s something for all Glaswegians to bear in mind next time we go to the ballot box.

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald