The SNP will regret expelling John Mason

You might have missed the news that the SNP has expelled one of its MSPs, announced as it was following the death of Alex Salmond. John Mason has represented the SNP almost continuously for a quarter-century, first as a Glasgow councillor, then as the MP who wrested away Labour heartland seat Glasgow East in a seismic 2008 by-election, and for the past 13 years as an MSP for the equivalent Holyrood constituency, Glasgow Shettleston. Shettleston is a place with many social and economic problems and even Mason’s opponents acknowledge that he is a hard-working representative.

Mason has rather a lot of opponents, most of them inside his own party. He is a Christian who holds orthodox Christian views about marriage, abortion and gender identity, views which weren’t all that uncommon inside the SNP in the not-too-distant past.