SNP MSP disagrees with Yousaf’s “Tory free” speech as he admits his focus is on Labour
John Mason, SNP MSP for Glasgow Shettleston revealed that his focus will not be on the Conservatives during the General Election campaign.
He said: “Clearly in Glasgow and this area, the challenge is Labour, so we are not really focused on the Tories at all, as they don’t really count in Glasgow, so the main challenge would be between the SNP and Labour.”
Mason’s comments come on the back of a speech delivered by First Minister Humza Yousaf on Saturday to party members in an event in Perth, where he called on them to “make history” by making Scotland a “Tory free” country.
This has led Pete Wishart, the longest-serving SNP MP to brand the statement as “unhelpful” and stated that the almost 20,000 Tory voters in his Perth and North Perthshire constituency “have a right to have their view and vote respected.”
Having said that, the Glasgow Shettleston MSP, stressed that Tory voters should not pay much attention on the comment made by the First Minister.
He continued: “That was not a message aimed at the voters, it was aimed at SNP activists. The Conservatives know that the SNP, Labour, the Greens and the Lib Dems want to beat them, it’s nothing new.”
Yousaf will celebrate his first year in power next Friday and Mason made clear that there are no divisions within the party on the back of what is arguably a split in the election strategy following Wishart’s statement.
He said: “I don’t think the SNP is fractured, I think there is a wide variety of opinion within the party on many subjects, some are more to the right, others to the left and we are all united over a desire for Scottish independence.
“I am relaxed about different people having slightly different opinions as long as there is unity and there will be colleagues that I disagree with, but I’m not fighting them, we just disagree on particular issues.”
The 66-year-old, who became MSP of the Glasgow City council area in 2011, reiterated the importance of not “jumping” on a section of a speech.
He said: “We need to look at the whole package and there is always a danger that we jump on a little bit of it, but the bigger picture is that the SNP are committed to democracy.”
However, in a statement on X (formerly Twitter), Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross launched a scathing attack on Yousaf’s comment, calling it an “insult” to those who voted Tory in 2019.
After it was announced by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak that there will be no election in May, a date is still to be called.
