Neale Hanvey has hit out at his former SNP Westminster colleagues as “aggressive and hostile” as he claimed the “toxic environment” inside the party was actively damaging his health.
The Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath MP quit the SNP to stand unsuccessfully on the regional list at last week’s Scottish Parliament elections for Alex Salmond’s Alba Party and said that while he was heartbroken to leave, he “detested” what it had become.
Mr Hanvey claimed those inside the party are “not allowed to have a critical mind” and said policy by diktat had made it a “really uncomfortable place”.
But he also questioned the motives of his one-time party colleagues in London, saying it was “frustrating” to see how many of the SNP cohort were “far too comfy with Westminster life – that really galled me”.
Mr Hanvey became the second SNP MP to defect to Mr Salmond’s new political party, in late March, following the departure of former Scottish justice secretary Kenny McAskill – a close ally of Mr Salmond.
He told the Scotsman: “I could not continue in a Westminster parliamentary group that was so aggressive and hostile. I did not think it was good for my physical and mental health.
“It was really getting incredibly difficult to even go to work, even virtually. You have to watch everything you say. If you are not loyal – and by that they mean obedient – then you are targeted.”
A tough run
Mr Hanvey endured a difficult run in the SNP after being sacked as the candidate for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath in 2019, just weeks before the election, after it emerged he had used anti-Semitic language on a social media post three years earlier.
With his name already on the ballot paper, he stood as an independent and won.
He was eventually brought back into the SNP fold and made vaccine spokesman, only to be sacked days later after he backed a crowdfunding campaign for a defamation case against his fellow SNP MP Kirsty Blackman.
Mr Hanvey, former NHS nursing specialist who was also serving as the SNP’s member on the Health and Social Care Select Committee, was dropped when he refused to apologise to Ms Blackman.
He said the atmosphere within the party was by then impacting on his mental health and he was “being targeted through the media again quite purposely by the SNP – that was their choice”.
Mr Hanvey developed a pain in his head, woke up and lost part of the visual field in his right eye having damaged an optic nerve through stress.
He said things only got worse after SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon was cleared of breaching the ministerial code over her involvement in the Alex Salmond saga and by this stage, “hostility within the group amplified to screech level”.
“That was my first meeting back and I thought I can’t deal with this. It was depressing,” he said.
Mr Hanvey insisted he will “absolutely not” trigger a by-election after joining Alba and said that while people will judge him at the next election, “if they are expecting me to remain in the SNP, they are asking me to stay in a toxic environment that was actively damaging my health”
He said he believes Alba still has a role to play in Scottish politics, adding: “I do not think Nicola Sturgeon will secure an independence referendum, and, if she does, she has not done the groundwork to win.”
The SNP declined to comment.