An SNP MSP has accused her party’s depute leader of making “categorically untrue” claims amid the row over whether to suspend Nicola Sturgeon.
Michelle Thomson had urged Sturgeon to resign the party whip after she was questioned as part of a police probe into indyref2 donations.
She said the former First Minister had to be “consistent” as she herself lost the whip in 2015 after stories were published on her property dealings.
Sturgeon was leader of the party at that point and Thomson was not even under police investigation.
However, deputy leader Keith Brown told the BBC the decision to withdraw the whip had come from Thomson.
The Falkirk East MSP rejected the claim: “I have heard some suggest that I voluntarily suspended the whip, although they qualify that statement to confirm they were not actually there.
"I was and I can confirm that this is categorically untrue . This is why I think it important for the former First Minister to set out why she deserves natural justice (which she of course does) - but others didn’t when she was in charge.”
Brown had claimed: “This was certainly long before I was the Deputy Leader, but I look back and I saw that that decision was taken, according to her own statements by Michele Thomson herself, she took the decision to withdraw from the whip at Westminster.”
He added: “The public record said that Michelle Thompson took the decision to withdraw from the whip in the Westminster group. Now of course, there would have been discussions behind that, that's always going to be the case, but I'm just going on what Michelle Thompson has said. And I can't talk to individual discussions, which happened back in 2015.”
“But to get back to the point, I think it is important that natural justice is followed here.”
Tory MSP Meghan Gallacher said: “Keith Brown’s desperate spinning in defence of Humza Yousaf will only pour petrol on the bitter civil war between SNP MSPs and MPs over Nicola Sturgeon’s preferential treatment.
“His claim that Michelle Thomson had voluntarily given up the SNP whip when she was under investigation amounts to gaslighting, as she has said very clearly she had the whip removed from her by Nicola Sturgeon.”
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