JOANNA Cherry has said she “takes issue” with Mhairi Black’s claim that some SNP MPs “absolutely love” being at Westminster and have grown too comfortable there.
The SNP MP and KC spoke out in her column for The National, telling her group deputy leader: “There is a difference between being comfortable and doing the job you were elected to do.”
It comes after Black told Times Radio: “I’ve seen folk who you would have thought would have been the first one marching to the Border with a claymore but now absolutely love being in London. I wouldn’t have expected that.
“I will not specify if they are current or not, but yes, I’ve come across ones where I’ve thought, ‘hmmm, you appear slightly more comfortable than I think you should be’.”
The interview was conducted before Black stands down as the MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South at the next General Election.
Cherry wrote a response to Black’s comments in her column on Friday.
She said: “I want to take issue with what Mhairi Black said about some SNP MPs being too comfortable at Westminster.
"There is a difference between being comfortable and doing the job you were elected to do. It is not easy being an opposition MP for years on end, but with painstaking work and the building of cross-party consensus, good things can be achieved.”
The Edinburgh South West MP pointed to the work of her colleagues, including Ronnie Cowan, Patricia Gibson, Carol Monaghan, and Marion Fellows, as well as her own headline-making success in taking Boris Johnson’s government to court over its prorogation of parliament.
Cherry said that to achieve such a thing, “we must be present and performing our jobs at Westminster as well as spending time working in our constituencies”.
She added: “The SNP are not an abstentionist party. Those who want that policy to change need to do the work to build a campaign to get it debated and changed at conference.”
Cherry also responded to Black’s comments, again made to Times Radio, in which she claimed she had “always” had issues with how the SNP was being run under Nicola Sturgeon.
Cherry wrote: “Just as those of us who were worried about the governance of the party and the management of its finances under the previous leadership had to campaign and stand for election to the NEC to do something about it.
“We could have done with the support of those only now speaking out because, at the time, we were thwarted. However, I don’t think anyone could seriously argue that we have not been vindicated by subsequent events.”
Black and Cherry were both first elected to Westminster at the 2015 General Election.
Black now serves as deputy leader of the Westminster group, running as second to Stephen Flynn in the internal elections to replace Ian Blackford held late in 2022.
Cherry lost her role as a frontbencher in early 2021 under Blackford’s leadership and has not been reinstated.
