THE publisher of a piece described as promoting anti-Scots “hate speech” has remained silent despite mounting criticism of the article a week after its publication.

The Spectator came under fire after publishing a piece by controversial columnist Rod Liddle who recently discovered he had Scottish ancestry, according to a DNA test.

In the story, published under the headline “Help me, I’m Scottish”, Liddle referred to himself as a “chippy, grasping, salad-dodging smackhead” after he found he was mostly of Scottish stock, rather than English, as he had previously assumed.

He added: “The only consolation is that henceforth I shall expect everybody else in England to subsidise me through their taxes, while simultaneously demanding total independence from them.”

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The National has made a number of attempts to contact the magazine for a comment in response to the criticisms but the publication has remained silent.

But critics of the piece claimed Liddle’s story perpetuated anti-Scottish stereotypes – with some claiming it went as far as “hate speech”.

Ian Fraser, a former Sunday Herald journalist, tweeted his outrage at the piece: “I suppose Rod Liddle and the Spectator editor [Fraser Nelson] thought this was amusing. To me, it seems more like hate speech.”

'Deliberately stirring up hatred' 

Meanwhile Richard Haviland, a former civil servant who worked at the Foreign Office, wrote an impassioned Twitter thread in response to the story.

Haviland said: “It’s tempting to ignore it. But the stuff that people like Rod Liddle write, most recently about Scots, matters. It matters because it is hate speech, given respectability by its appearance in the Spectator and given retractability by being implied as ‘humour’.”

He said the piece gave “ammunition to the worst of the English and the worst of the Scots” and said that Liddle was involved in the “deliberate stirring up of mutual hatred” between the two countries.

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Haviland, who has written in the past about his reluctant support for independence, went on to say that the influence in the English media had resulted in the “dehumanisation of refugees and deep-seated xenophobia; in the geo-political and domestic catastrophe that is Brexit”.

Irish artist Robert Bohan added: “As a neutral observer I’m regularly stunned by the bigotry of London-based media towards the Scottish.

“If the below article had Irish, instead of Scottish, it would rightly be called out as racism. The same media illogically campaigns for the Union. It’s bizarrely contradictory.”

Poet and Scots language advocate Billy Kay said the story did not amount to hate speech but criticised its use of stereotypes about Scottish people.

He said: “Not so sure about hate speech, it’s more the use of every worn and condescending cliché the English elites use to describe their partners in their precious Union.”

However, some Scots saw the funny side, with National columnist Kevin McKenna praising the piece in Wednesday’s paper and saying he had “laughed out loud” at it.

He added: “I think we need to relax; chill; visit the pub; get howling with The Salvadors and indulge in some therapeutic physical aggravation at the end of the night. And if you’re into something more esoteric, maybe smoke something organic.”