SNP MP Amy Callaghan has hit out at a Westminster journalist after she was described as “the one with the crutch” in a sketch on parliamentary business.
Callaghan, who suffered a brain haemorrhage in mid-2020 and spent four months in hospital before making a virtual return to the Commons, hit out at The Times’s Quentin Letts on Tuesday afternoon.
The MP said Letts had “debased and humiliated” her through his repeated mentions of her disability.
He had written: “Eight Scots Nat buttocks shot airborne simultaneously, as if put up by beaters on a country shoot. One of the most mild-mannered of Conservative MPs, Gloucester’s Richard Graham, had just protested that Scots constituencies didn’t take any asylum seekers. ‘Cock a doodle doooooo!’ squawked four SNP women, and they rose faster than jacks-in-the-box.
“Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West), levitating like a cartoon fakir, jabbed a finger at the porcelain-delicate Graham. Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) expostulated, one very cross walrus. Another complainant who jumped to her feet had earlier been on a crutch. A miracle had occurred.”
Letts (above) later referred to Callaghan again, clarifying that she was “the one with the crutch” he had mentioned earlier.
The lines appeared in the print edition of The Times, but appear to have been removed from the online version.
Sharing a photo of the print copy, Callaghan wrote on Twitter: “‘The one with the crutch’. Debased and humiliated to nothing more than the support I need to walk. Lovely.
“Would you say this about someone in a wheelchair @thequentinletts? Or anyone else who had survived a stroke?
“Ableism passed off as Westminster patter. Sickening.”
"The one with the crutch" Debased and humiliated to nothing more than the support I need to walk. Lovely. Would you say this about someone in a wheelchair @thequentinletts? Or anyone else who had survived a stroke? Ableism passed off as Westminster patter. Sickening. pic.twitter.com/IIYtXzgGEW
— Amy Callaghan MP (@AmyCallaghanSNP) March 14, 2023
Richard Graham, the Tory MP who Letts described as “porcelain-delicate”, faced criticism in 2013 after he suggested that women who wore short skirts and high heels were making themselves more vulnerable to rape.
Further, the Gloucester MP’s claim that “Scots constituencies didn’t take any asylum seekers”, reported by Letts, is inaccurate.
According to Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, Scotland hosts 0.7 asylum seekers and 0.7 resettled refugees per 1000 of the population. Among others, this is higher than London, south west England, and the west Midlands.
Letts has also faced claims of misogyny in the past, as well as criticism for his “pathetic” attitude to Scottish accents.
In 2019, the journalist wrote about the play Peter Gynt at London's National Theatre, saying that the “fruity purr" of English actor Oliver Ford Davies had been " a welcome calm ... from the whining Scottish accents".
The Times has been asked for comment.
