A new year beckons but old habits die hard. So it’s no surprise then that the SNP have opted to begin 2023 by welcoming one of their disgraced brethren back into the fold. Patrick Grady, the party’s former chief whip, has this morning had the SNP whip restored at Westminster – despite being found to have sexually harassed a teenage party employee. Is that what the nats meant when they talked about preserving ‘Scotland’s future’ eh?
Grady was reported to have ‘resigned’ last summer from the nationalists after the Commons authorities ruled he had made an unwanted sexual advance towards a male staff member. But now Kieran Andrews – the scoop-getting, agenda-setting Scottish political editor of the Times – reports that the SNP’s member conduct committee only ‘imposed upon Patrick a six-month suspension of his party membership.’ This was backdated to his initial-two day Commons on June 14.
The period in question has now elapsed meaning that Grady is now free to rejoin his SNP colleagues, according to an email sent to MPs this morning by the new Chief Whip Martin Docherty-Hughes.
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