Ian Blackford’s bad weekend

It's not been Ian Blackford's best weekend. On Friday night, the Daily Mail exposed a secret recording in which the Westminster leader directed his MPs to back a sex pest in their party. Blackford told SNP members on Tuesday night to give Patrick Grady their 'absolute full support' after the latter was found by an independent panel to have touched and stroked the neck, hair and back of a colleague 17 years his junior at a social event. Just 15 minutes after Grady's suspension from parliament was announced, Blackford told applauding SNP colleagues that:

“He’s going to face a number of challenges over the short term and so he should have our absolute full support. I for one very much look forward to welcoming Patrick back into the group next week. I am sure that everybody here will agree.

On Saturday night, another round of bad headlines was inspired after a late night email was leaked in which Owen Thompson, Grady's replacement as SNP Chief Whip at Westminster, threatened his fellow MPs with criminal action over the recording. Thompson said that parliamentary security had been alerted and that he planned to interrogate each attendee at Tuesday night's meeting. Grady’s victim, who was 19 at the time of the sexual misconduct, was quoted as saying: 'It is disappointing to see that the SNP would rather take strong action against the leaker than the perpetrator.'

And then on Sunday night, the Daily Mail followed up its earlier scoop by reporting a leaked email from Ian Blackford in March 2021 in which he promised Grady's victim that he would take a 'zero tolerance approach to inappropriate behaviour.' Sent two days after Grady's resignation as chief whip following the complaint becoming public, Blackford added that ‘I am clear that the welfare of our staff is paramount.’ Unsurprisingly, the revelation of this earlier email, combined with the recording, has prompted charges of hypocrisy: not least because the SNP man has been happy to claim the moral high ground on such issues in the past.

Duplicitous, self-serving and allergic to scrutiny: doesn't sound like the Ian Blackford we all know and love, does it?