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Daily Record
Daily Record
Politics
Chris McCall

Douglas Ross shouted down at Scottish Conservatives council manifesto launch in Glasgow

Douglas Ross was loudly heckled while launching the Scottish Conservatives local election manifesto in Glasgow today.

The Tory MP had barely spoken for a minute at the Courtyard hotel in Finnieston before he was briefly shouted down by veteran campaigner Sean Clerkin.

The Conservative leader had just branded Labour and the SNP "the terrible twins" of Scottish politics when Clerkin suddenly shouted "three jobs Ross" and launched into a minute-long rant about welfare cuts.

Clerkin told the room: "1.3 million people are going to be driven into poverty because of the cost of living increase - all because of the criminal leaders at Westminster, Johnson and Sunak.

"They should be forced to resign over PartyGate - because at the end of the day people have died, and people couldn't get near before the end."

Douglas Ross was heckled by Sean Clerkin at an event in Glasgow on Thursday (Daily Record)

Ross patiently let Clerkin say his piece before Tory aides ushered the campaigner out of the room.

Speaking outside the hotel to the Record, Clerkin defended his decision to interrupt the Conservative event.

"I was representing the Scottish Tenants Organisation and our members are being forced into poverty," he said.

"The bottom line is some of our members have told us in recent days that they are starving and they are cold.

"That's why I felt the need to do what I did today - to draw attention to the fact people are suffering now".

Clerkin has a long record of interrupting political campaign events in Scotland.

He was arrested in 2020 after a stunt at Edinburgh Airport which saw him unveil a banner that proclaimed "England get out of Scotland" - but the case was later dropped.

In 2011, Clerkin hit the headlines when he forced former Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray to take refuge in a Subway sandwich shop in Glasgow city centre ahead of that year's Holyrood election.

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