SENIOR sources in the SNP believe the party’s ruling body will approve a request from MPs to reinstate Michelle Thomson when they meet early next month.
One well-placed figure said there was no grounds for her continued suspension after police said she is not under investigation. “There is no case to answer so I think the grounds for keeping her out don’t exist,” the insider told The National.
A second added: “Given that she has no case to answer I think it is extremely unlikely that she won’t be reinstated.”
The national executive of the SNP will consider the request to reinstate Thomson on Saturday 1 October following an appeal from the party’s group at Westminster.
She resigned the party whip and had her SNP membership automatically suspended in September last year after it emerged police were investigating property deals carried out by a solicitor struck off for misconduct. Thomson denies any wrongdoing and police yesterday told The National she is not under investigation.
It is understood that at a meeting of the SNP’s 54 MPs on Tuesday night, a motion calling for the party to “urgently” consider readmitting Thomson received unanimous backing. The motion claims that Thomson has been “denied natural justice” and that “her current situation has gone on for too long”.
It reads: “The SNP Westminster Parliamentary Group requests that the National Executive Committee of the SNP urgently considers the position of Michelle Thomson MP with a view to accepting her back into party membership and therefore to the parliamentary whip.”
It also states that during her suspension, Thomson has been “a very loyal and extremely hard working member of parliament, while lacking the professional support available to others”.
It concludes that any MP charged with an offence should have the whip removed, but says “that is not the case with Michelle Thomson”.
One of the party insiders told The National that there would not have been a discussion at the MPs group meeting last night if party chiefs weren’t positive about her being allowed back in. “The meeting last night in Westminster was not some random discussion. It is a part of a process to prepare for her to be allowed back in,” said the source.
“Michelle stood down as at the time there was a public discussion about whether she was going to be subject of a police investigation and that has not been the case.”
Thomson, who ran the pro-independence Business for Scotland group during the 2014 referendum campaign, was one of the group of 56 SNP MPs elected in the Nationalists’ general election landslide in Scotland in May 2015.
She was appointed the party’s business spokesman and continued sitting on the business select committee after resigning the SNP whip to become an independent MP.
Thomson was accused of taking advantage of vulnerable families by building a property portfolio worth about £1.7 million by buying homes at knockdown prices from families struggling to pay their mortgages.
A solicitor, Christopher Hales, who acted for the Edinburgh West MP and her husband, has been struck off for professional misconduct over his part in 13 deals involving Thomson or M&F Property Solutions, of which she was a partner.
A Police Scotland spokeswoman said last night: “There is no investigation into Michelle Thomson but there is an investigation into Christopher Hales, a 57- year-old solicitor who was struck off and whose services were used by Michelle Thomson for a number of property transactions and inquiries are still ongoing.”
Scottish Labour Lothian MSP Neil Findlay was critical of any move to reinstate Thomson back into the SNP. “There are still many questions to be answered about this case. But given what we do know, it would be wrong for Michelle Thomson to return as an SNP MP,” he said.
Thomson did not respond to a request for a comment when The National contacted her yesterday.
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