AN SNP politician has been sent abuse attacking she and her party colleagues for their “disgusting mispronunciations” of English words in the House of Commons.
Kirsty Blackman, the MP for Aberdeen North, shared a screenshot of a message she’d been sent attacking Scottish MPs over their accents.
The message read: “May I further request that when speaking in the English Parliament the SNP members converse in ENGLISH not the most disgusting mispronunciations of almost every word with a vowel in it that they habitually use which I find a gross insult and abuse of the beautiful English language.”
She shared the message with the comment: “A fan writes.”
A fan writes: pic.twitter.com/BVGh2GfxaI
— Kirsty Blackman (@KirstySNP) March 3, 2023
Blackman told The National: “We were told in 2014 that Scotland should lead the UK not leave the UK. This notion that somehow our accents are not good enough for the Westminster Parliament is deeply offensive.
"If the Unionists want rid of our accents that badly they could accede to our request for a referendum and then they’d never have to listen to us again.
“I am a proud doric speaker and will do what I can to promote our dialect, including being the first and still only MP to swear in to Parliament in Doric.”
SNP MPs have previously found their accents confusing opposition members – with David Linden, from Glasgow, forced to repeat a question multiple times in 2018 as a Tory couldn’t understand what he was saying.
“I’m really sorry, please could you do it very slowly in Antipodean English,” the New Zealand-born Sir Paul Beresford said, before Lindsay Hoyle suggested Linden reply in writing.
Alan Brown, an MP for Ayrshire, has had similar problems – telling Holyrood Magazine in 2017 that despite having an American wife who understands him perfectly, MPs in the Commons often needed him to repeat himself.
“It became a running joke with my colleagues that even if I asked a two-line question Hansard would send me a note asking me to confirm what I said,” he explained.
