Crisis and scandal won’t go away if self-reflection is not on agenda

The meeting with a representative of a genocidal apartheid state in which they discussed a wide range of issues, from culture to energy, has been widely condemned by SNP members and non-members alike, with at least one SNP branch and some parliamentarians calling on Robertson to be removed from his cabinet position.

While these calls are well-meaning, they belie the reality of the matter which is that Robertson is not solely responsible for this unacceptable meeting. Swinney gave Roberson his full backing as the photo of him grinning with Grudsky circulated on social media, and it has since emerged that the meeting took place following an “engagement request” from the First Minister to the cabinet secretary’s staff team to take the meeting.

Yesterday, Robertson released a statement in which he took full responsibility for the decision to take the meeting, but this mess is as much Swinney’s as it is Robertson’s, and any attempt to hold Robertson solely accountable while letting Swinney off the hook would be an injustice. So much for “a safe pair of hands”.

READ MORE: Scottish Government won't meet with Israel until 'progress made on peace'

What makes this whole debacle more bizarre is that the issue of Israel’s brutal occupation and genocide in Palestine has been one on which the SNP have otherwise shown significant leadership on.

It has been the SNP’s team in Westminster who have repeatedly held Labour and the Tories to account for their shameful complicity, and as first minister, Humza Yousaf showed inspirational leadership as one of the first Western leaders to call for an immediate ceasefire and a ban on arms sales when the onslaught first intensified.

The leadership on this issue of Yousaf and other SNP parliamentarians in recent months has been strong and consistent, and I have no doubt that the party’s dreadful result in the recent Westminster election would’ve been even worse without it.

Despite this, it’s also the reality that the Scottish Government continues to offer public grants and contracts to companies complicit in Israel’s illegal occupation and settlements in the West Bank, and while the SNP have – until last week at least – had the right rhetoric when it came to Israel’s breaches of international law, their actions in the areas where the Scottish Government actually holds the power to make a difference have been severely lacking.

With a first minister and cabinet secretary now offering Israel PR opportunities and smiley photos for social media, while also continuing to be complicit in their illegal occupation through public grants and contracts, it’s hard to take this Scottish Government’s leadership on the brutality being inflicted against innocent Palestinians seriously. They’ve lost a whole lot of credibility, and are losing more with each day that they don’t take action.

Robertson wasn’t the only SNP MSP to meet with the Israeli deputy ambassador, with the grotesquely conservative MSP for Glasgow Shettleston John Mason (below) sharing a gleeful photo of him and Grudsky on social media as the story about her meeting with Robertson began to break.

(Image: Andrew Milligan)

His deplorable comments denying Israel’s genocide in Gaza eventually led to him having the whip suspended by the SNP, but as in so many cases, the real scandal is that he was ever able to make such comments as an SNP MSP in the first place.

Mason has made countless comments throughout the years which have been misogynistic, homophobic and transphobic, and his extreme anti-abortion stance has brought immense shame on an SNP which supposedly position themselves as socially liberal.

Despite this, he has been selected and elected as an SNP parliamentary candidate on no less than four separate occasions. A man who welcomed the overturning of Roe v Wade, a man who said “girls don’t always say yes the first time” about a second independence referendum, should never have been elected or re-elected as an SNP parliamentarian, yet here we are.

READ MORE: Read Angus Robertson's full statement on SNP minister's Israel meeting

And he’s not alone, with a number of his current and former (including some who were rejected at the ballot box just last month) SNP parliamentarians holding explicitly socially conservative and bigoted views around marginalised groups.

While Mason has finally had the whip suspended, the SNP’s continued tolerance of intolerant, bigoted and conservative views among their elected members exposes their arrogance, and raises the question: just how broad is this tent?

An SNP in which Mason felt comfortable making such unacceptable comments about the genocide in Gaza will never be able to hold credibility in the fight for Palestinian liberation, and an SNP where Swinney and Robertson can think it acceptable to hold meetings between the Scottish Government and Israel to discuss anything other than an end to the latter’s genocidal onslaught exposes an entitlement inevitable after 17 years in power.

(Image: Andrew Milligan)

While many are calling on Robertson to resign, Swinney cannot be let off the hook here.

Robertson has now apologised for the meeting and made clear that no further meetings will take place, but this will be meaningless if the Scottish Government doesn’t now immediately halt any and all public money going to companies complicit in Israeli genocide and occupation – as the Scottish Greens have been calling on them to do for months.

This should be a condition of the parliament’s continued confidence in both Robertson and the First Minister.

Beyond this though, the SNP clearly have some greater self-reflection to do. A party addicted to crisis and scandal, when will they realise that allowing social conservatives such as Mason – or, indeed, the Deputy First Minister – in a party which tries to paint itself as centre-left is unsustainable?

Perhaps once they do reach this realisation and stop trying to pander to every side on every issue, foolish blunders such as this meeting may become less frequent.