Murray Foote, who was in charge of media for the SNP, has resigned following the row over numbers of members.
Mr Foote, formerly editor of The Daily Record and Sunday Mail, tweeted: “Acting in good faith and as a courtesy to colleagues at party HQ, I issued agreed party responses to media inquiries regarding membership.
“It has subsequently become apparent there are serious issues with these responses.
“Consequently, I concluded this created a serous impediment to my role and I resigned my position with the SNP group at Holyrood.”
The party had denied that the number of listed members had decreased by tens of thousands and Foote had defended media reports last month as inaccurate. But in light of the news yesterday which confirmed the numbers had fallen to 72,186 Mr Foote handed his notice to the Chief Executive, Peter Murrell.
Earlier in the week the two SNP leadership candidates Ash Regan and Kate Forbes had issued a joint demand to Mr Murrell to publish the number of members who could vote in the leadership election.
The party then published the numbers showing a drop of about 40%.
Ash Regan’s campaign pointed out that while she was pleased to learn that SNP HQ has released the membership numbers, after her call for greater party transparency, it is “”important to note that there has been a significant reduction in membership numbers since October 2022, following the Gender Recognition Reform (GRR) fiasco”. This was due to the previous administration’s resistance to listening to reason on the protection of women and girls. Such a significant drop in membership numbers must have been what quickened the out-going First Minister’s resignation.
Ash Regan is the only candidate in this leadership contest who has demonstrated integrity on the GRR debacle, having resigned from government in protest at the resistance to introduce safeguards around the GRR Bill. She understands that listening to the concerns of members is crucial for the success of the SNP.
Ash Regan said: “The SNP has a tradition of attracting independent minded and smart people who work together for Scotland. We’ve lost some good people and I want to see us build our membership numbers and attract people back to the party. The SNP I lead will recognise the hard work and dedication of our activists.”
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
