SNP suspend Fergus Ewing after he voted to bring down Green Minister

dailyrecord.co.uk:

A veteran MSP has been suspended by the SNP after he voted to bring down a Government Minister.Fergus Ewing was sanctioned after his appeal over a week-long suspension was rejected.The SNP group initially took the action after he voted for a motion of no confidence in Green Minister Lorna Slater.He has been a persistent critic of the SNP’s power-sharing deal with the Greens.It is understood Mr Ewing will be suspended from the SNP for a week from midnight this evening.In a statement, the MSP for Inverness and Nairn, described the SNP as an "authoritarian party".He said: “I stood up for my constituents to protect them against a disastrous policy, the Deposit Return Scheme, and voted with my conscience against that policy, which was eventually discarded.

But the SNP leadership no longer tolerates a conscience vote.”He added: “By definition, your conscience cannot be contracted out.

A conscience vote cannot be subject to permission or dependent upon anyone’s prior consent. "The group will always support the leadership - about one-third are on the ministerial payroll.

So any conscience vote since 2021 requires prior permission of the whole group. Thus, the SNP has now become an authoritarian party requiring strict obedience to the leadership at the expense of personal freedom for any individual member. “One can see the same authoritarianism in some policies - where, for example, we no longer trust ordinary citizens to reach the ‘right’ verdict in trial by jury; or, regarding gender reform, where leadership will only listen to arguments deemed by them to be ‘valid.’“My view is people in Scotland absolutely do not want MSPs who must always blindly follow the party line. ‘A ‘nest of fearties’ is what they do not want,’ the poet