IN the week before their party conference and in the run-up to the delivery of the Scottish budget, the SNP is once again the subject of a row over policies and personalities.

The latest round started with a social media post by Scotland’s most prominent lesbian politician, Joanna Cherry, about conversion therapy and led on to calls for her expulsion from the party before she then sought a Scottish Government investigation into an LGBT+ charity.

It’s also drawn in other SNP elected members and shows no signs of settling. “What is going on in the SNP? The entire party seems to be at each other’s throats – at least if social media is any barometer,” wrote Neil Mackay of The Herald. “Threats of resignation, members and branches turning on each other, accusations and counter-accusations ... Are we about to see another great disruption?”

It’s a row that has, like others before it, played out predominantly on Twitter, where Cherry’s name was amongst the top trending topics earlier this week.

READ MORE: Joanna Cherry: This is why I have concerns around conversion therapy legislation

If you’re not on that platform, much of this – if not all of it – may have passed you by.

But privately, elected members who have stayed out of the fray are talking about it in concerned tones while activists not directly engaged in the debate are expressing frustration that yet another round of arguments is taking place in public.

Some have described the dispute as a struggle for the direction of the party that’s put progressive policies at the forefront of its agenda, or, to the contrary, as the workplace bullying of a talented MP.

Others have criticised what they see as a failure of the famous discipline that was once the hallmark of SNP operations. “It’s funny how this as all started as soon as COP26 finished,” one activist said. “It’s like they were waiting for it to finish to start up again.

“This is five folk and a dog on Twitter, this is not the membership. The membership are sick and tired of this.

“We’re six months out from the council elections, we should be focusing on that and on getting this referendum.”

It’s often said by long-serving SNP campaigners that the party is like a family. Like many family arguments, this one is long-running, pointed and involves serious issues.

On Saturday, November 13, Cherry, who represents Edinburgh South West, posted the following: “Re conversion therapy, which any right thinking person should oppose, we must not make it a criminal offence for therapists to try to help patients with gender dysphoria to feel comfortable in their birth sex. As we used to say #Somepeoplearegay. #GetoverIt.”

The comment refers to processes ongoing at both Holyrood and Westminster over new curbs on the practice. While it’s traditionally been seen to refer to attempts to “cure” a person’s same-sex attraction, it’s now understood also to include matters of transgender identity.

Justin Beck of the End Conversion Therapy Campaign has spoken about how he was subjected to

exorcism over his sexuality. Both the UK and Scottish Governments have indicated that they’ll legislate against such practices, and this week Holyrood ministers announced the formation of a new expert group to advise them on how to go about this.

It’s expected that the law change will be introduced by the end of 2023, following the establishment of an agreed definition of conversion methods and advise for victims.

FOLLOWING Cherry’s tweet, Nicola Sturgeon was urged to take action against her as SNP leader on the basis of transphobia, as with previous rows involving the MP and the issue of transgender rights. Similarly, there were public pronouncements by some individuals that they’d left the party, or were considering doing so.

Four active and influential groups within the party – its student, LGBT+, youth and BAME wings – have issued calls for Cherry to have the whip removed over comments she made related to conversion therapy.

Kirsty Blackman also criticised her Westminster group colleague and accused the party of failing to act when similar concerns were raised in the past. Naming Cherry in her post, she told Twitter followers that she was doing so on social media because “complaining through the proper channels, repeatedly, for years, has resulted in nothing happening and these views still being expressed – and still causing harm to so many people.”

It was a post that in itself attracted accusations of bullying and privately party figures expressed a range of opinions about the fall-out. All were extremely uncomfortable about the matter but at a loss to explain how these clear differences over policy and approach to serious issues are now part of a “toxic” discourse – a word that came up several times – and why senior figures had not been able to “nip it in the bud” a long time ago.

BY Friday morning, Cherry, a National columnist, had written a lengthy piece stating her position. On potential conversion therapy legislation, she said “that if a child or vulnerable person declares they are transgender, then any professional seeking to explore the reasons for this feeling, or alternative pathways other than transition, would be at risk of investigation and prosecution for engaging in ‘conversion therapy’”.

“What I have said has been grossly misrepresented including by a leading charity funded by the Scottish Government. And, in flagrant breach of the party’s code of conduct, SNP members including parliamentarians and councillors have taken to social media calling for me to have the whip withdrawn and even for me to be expelled from the party,” she said. “Their actions disgrace the SNP and they put me in danger of further abuse and worse.”

READ MORE: Mhairi Black: Why I stand against conversion therapy in all its guises

Later that day, she published a letter she’d sent to the Scottish Government calling on Social Justice Secretary Shona Robison to investigate a statement made by the Equality Network charity, which receives government funding.

Cherry said the charity had contributed to the “hostile communications” she’d been receiving after it shared the following words along with a picture of her original tweet: “Apparently, ‘We must not make it a criminal offence for therapists to try to help lesbian and gay patients to feel comfortable in a mixed sex relationship.’ Conversion therapy is harmful and wrong whether it’s trying to change someone’s sexual orientation or their gender identity.”

Cherry called the categorisation of her position “abhorrent”, adding that she “had not and would never” say this about conversion therapy “in relation to the sexual orientation of lesbians and gay men”.