Lisa Cameron, the SNP MP who defected to the Conservative party on Thursday, said she and her family have been forced to go into hiding in Scotland after she was threatened with being “bricked” in the street.
Cameron, her husband and their two daughters have moved to a secret location in the Scottish countryside after the MP was emailed threats of violence, including “I hope someone throws a brick at you in the street”, “I hope you burn” and “Think your mental health is bad now – wail til you see what abuse and nastiness yer [sic] going to have to put up with”.
In her first interview since she quit the SNP to join the Conservatives, the MP told the Times she had received a barrage of abuse and menacing messages.
She said: “We have had a lot of personal threats. Unfortunately, I think that’s where the political discourse has got to in Scotland: aggression, violence and anger are coupled on to the debate about nationalism.”
The former NHS psychologist, who was elected in 2015, resigned from the SNP on the eve of its party conference in Aberdeen – hours before a selection meeting was due to choose the next candidate for her constituency of East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow. She had been facing a challenge from SNP staffer Grant Costello, who was supported by both Scottish government minister Christina McKelvie and current and former East Kilbride MSPs Collette Stevenson and Linda Fabiani.
In the interview, Cameron said that because she repeatedly opposed the SNP’s “progressive” political positions, she had been blanked by party colleagues in the Commons’ tea room and corridors and was forced to seek help from a counsellor and her GP after experiencing panic attacks and loneliness.
“I found it to be quite a psychologically coercive situation,” Cameron told the Times. “They are always right. If you question things you are wrong and you’re isolated. There is a lot of fear and intimidation.”
She was prescribed antidepressants and underwent counselling, but was told by her doctor that she should look at her environment as being a main cause of her troubles.
She said “the final straw” was the way the party had handled complaints against SNP MP Patrick Grady. When allegations first emerged that he made unwanted advances to a teenage party worker, Ian Blackford, then the party’s Westminster leader, asked colleagues to rally around Grady by “giving him as much support as possible”. An independent inquiry upheld the allegations and Grady was suspended from the party for six months but had the whip restored late last year. Cameron said the party worker had been let down by the process. “The way the victim was treated was something I could never be complicit in or condone,” she said.
Cameron, the first MP ever to move from the SNP to the Conservatives, said: “I don’t feel the government is being run competently in Scotland.”
Her decision was dismissed on BBC Radio Scotland as “a rather odd tantrum from somebody who was going to lose their nomination” by SNP president Mike Russell, while Scotland first minister and SNP leader Humza Yousaf said her constituents would be “deeply let down” by her actions, adding she should “do the honourable thing” and stand down.
