SNP leadership contender Kate Forbes’ husband attended a private Tory hustings in the race to elect the next Conservative leader.
Alasdair MacLennan was in the middle of the audience to hear Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak spell out their right-wing visions for the UK.
Forbes’ campaign said he was a non-member “guest” but a Scottish Tories spokesperson said only party members were allowed to attend.
Forbes is in a three-way battle with Health Secretary Humza Yousaf and backbencher Ash Regan, to succeed Nicola Sturgeon as SNP leader and first minister.
The Finance Secretary has faced claims she wants to shift the party to the right and has been blasted for her opposition to gay marriage.
Now her husband Ali, who she married in 2021, is at the centre of a riddle over his own political sympathies.
He attended the high-security Tory hustings in Perth in August last year – a five-hour round trip from the Highlands home he shares with Forbes.
A picture obtained by the Record verifies his attendance.
After being approached for comment, a spokesman for the Forbes campaign said: “Confirming that Ali attended as a guest and that he’s not a member of any party.”
The spokesman later said he was not a member at the time of the event and had been invited by a friend who lives in the Highlands.
We asked if he had ever been a member of the Tories but no response was provided.
A Scottish Conservative spokesperson said: “Only party members and invited members of the media were permitted to attend our leadership hustings.”
A Tory source added: “Other than the press and a few neutral party staffers, everybody in attendance was there to listen to either the current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss, as you would expect during a leadership contest.
“The only reason a member of the public would be a guest at a Conservative leadership hustings is if they were a member of the party at one time and continued to support the Tories.”
A Conservative member who attended said: “We were a bit surprised to see him attend an event to help members decide the next UK prime minister. It’s a bit bizarre.”
Truss wooed the hustings with a tough anti-independence message that laid into the SNP.
She told members she was a “child of the Union” and added: “To me, we are not just neighbours, we are family – and I will never let our family be split up.”
Truss won the loudest applause of the evening when she emphatically ruled out another referendum if she won the contest.
She said: “If I am elected as prime minister, I will not allow another referendum. We had a referendum in 2014 and it was a once-in-a-lifetime referendum.
“It was agreed by the SNP it was a once-in-a-lifetime referendum. I believe in politicians keeping their
promises and Nicola Sturgeon should keep hers.”
Truss became prime minister but resigned within weeks after her government nearly crashed the economy.
As well as opposing gay marriage and having children out of wedlock, Forbes’ critics fear she would move the party to the right on economics if she won.
In a recent interview, she said of public spending: “I think politicians see the answer is all in the money – put more money in and you’ll get a result. That’s not true.
“You can have the funding, the funding needs to find its way to the front line, which is where the public are ultimately engaging with these public services. So we need new radical ideas to fix
problems, rather than just assuming that money solves problems.”
She also claimed wealth creation had become a “dirty word” and slammed “ridiculously high taxes”.
Labour MSP Jackie Baillie said: “It seems like there is less to separate Kate Forbes’ SNP from the Tories than meets the eye.
“I sincerely hope Kate Forbes isn’t planning on taking any economic lessons from Liz Truss.”
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