A FURIOUS crowd in Perth confronted a Tory candidate who appeared to suggest the SNP were “anti-English”.

At a campaign event in the Fair City, Luke Graham complained about the SNP branding itself as an “internationalist party” as he suggested SNP MPs in the House of Commons express their dislike for “other people on the islands of Great Britain”.

“What I can’t stand is that when you get to the kind of SNP position which is ‘we’re an internationalist party, we want to be reaching out to everyone’, SNP MPs sit in Parliament all the time [saying] ‘we love everyone else’ apart from the other people on the islands of Great Britain,” said Graham.

The crowd immediately took issue with Graham’s comments with one man saying he found it “insulting” he had described SNP voters as “anti-English”.

“I’m anti-Westminster because I think it’s a shambles,” the man went on.

Graham – who was an MP for Ochil and South Perthshire between 2017 and 2019  – then denied that he had described the SNP in this way which attracted more annoyance in the crowd.

He said: “I didn’t say the SNP were anti-English, I said they are anti-Westminster because they can’t co-govern on our islands.

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“I did not say anti-English. I didn’t say that. That’s a fact. We can watch the video tape back that’s why we’re recording it.”

After losing his seat in 2019, Graham was made head of Boris Johnson’s Union Unit.

He was subsequently sacked from the role in February 2021 after a “brutal” row over indyref2.

The Financial Times reported he clashed with Oliver Lewis who briefly took over what Government officials described as a “beefed-up union unit”.

Lewis unexpectedly left the role after two weeks with reports saying he felt his position was being made “untenable” by others in No 10. 

Graham is aiming to get a seat back in the Commons by contesting the new Perth and Kinross-shire constituency against SNP veteran Pete Wishart.