The Scottish National party has deleted an election campaign video on TikTok after it featured a sexually explicit song by the American rapper Big Boss Vette.
The track, Pretty Girls Walk, carries an explicit lyrics warning on streaming platforms and starts with an expletive-laden first verse.
The SNP video featured the party’s leader, John Swinney, and promoted policies including calling for a full ceasefire in Gaza, its free baby boxes for new parents and free bus travel for young people.
After more than 15 years of dominating Scottish politics, the SNP has been struggling to raise money after a series of reputation-damaging crises such as the police investigation into party funding, bitter disputes over party policy and Humza Yousaf’s disastrous decision to scrap his party’s power-sharing deal with the Scottish Greens.
Data on online election spending compiled by Who Targets Me has suggested that the SNP has spent tiny sums on campaign advertising in the last month, as it tries to compete against Scottish Labour, which is now ahead in polling.
Its figures show the SNP spent £811, or 2.6%, of the £31,000 paid for online advertising in the four weeks to Sunday 26 May. By contrast, Scottish Labour has spent £20,000, 64.5% of the total, and the Scottish Conservatives £8,950 (28.9%).
The Daily Mail has reported that SNP MSPs have been urged to offer free beds to party workers travelling from Westminster to work on the election as the party is unable to afford hotel beds.
The breakaway nationalist Alba party, set up by the SNP’s former leader and the former first minister Alex Salmond, complained that the song in the deleted video also featured the N-word.
Tony Osy, Alba’s candidate in Glasgow South West and a member of its African Scots for Alba caucus, said: “The stigma of that word embodies and invokes painful memories and inhumane ill will.
“We must not condone, award, or engage in political messaging that uses the N-word in any capacity, or in any artistic endeavour that does not allude to the historical context of the word, or that does not highlight the prejudicial nature of the word.
“Political parties that do not understand the deeply hurtful and dehumanising use of that racist word should not be using it in clickbait political adverts.”
