The SNP is heading towards the opposition benches at Holyrood if it does not address the internal “culture of hate”, Joanna Cherry has said.
The former SNP MP, who lost her Edinburgh South West seat to Labour at the General Election, said she will be stepping away from frontline politics to “reflect” on the future of her party.
Writing in The National, she issued a warning to SNP leader John Swinney: “The enormity of what happened to the SNP vote at the General Election must not be ignored.”
The KC was one of 39 SNP politicians who lost their seat on July 4, with just nine party MPs elected to Westminster.
“I don’t sense any great appetite on the part of the leadership of the party to do this properly.”
She said she is not currently considering a Holyrood run herself, and warned: “Opposition is where the SNP are heading at present.”
Ms Cherry has been one of the loudest internal critics of her party’s leadership in recent years, clashing with former first minister Nicola Sturgeon over gender reform laws in particular.
In her final column for the pro-independence newspaper, Ms Cherry said she will remain a member of the SNP but will do so from the background until the party addresses it “culture of hate”.
She said it is “profoundly depressing” to see where the party, and the pro-independence movement, has landed almost a decade after the Scottish referendum.
“The positivity is gone and some people within our movement feel they have licence to attack those with whom they disagree in the most unpleasant terms,” she said.
“No wonder we are putting voters off.
“Back in 2014 had I foreseen the level of abuse and harassment I would have to endure as an SNP MP, simply for daring to question the direction the party was taking, I would never have left my legal career to enter elected politics.”
However, she went on to say she did not “regret having done so for a moment”.
Scottish Conservative MSP Annie Wells said: “Joanna Cherry’s decision to step away from politics is a damning indictment of the toxic culture that has rotted the SNP to its core.
“The fact that one of the party’s most prominent politicians has suffered years of abuse and harassment just for daring to question the SNP’s direction on certain issues demonstrates how ugly and unmanageable this civil war has become.
“The sooner Scotland sees the back of this wretched SNP Government the better.
“It is clear for all to see that they are too busy fighting amongst themselves to run the country properly – as soaring NHS waiting times, rising crime levels and falling standards in our schools all too readily demonstrate.”
