THE official Twitter account of the Leave campaign has hit out at the SNP after the party’s leader at Westminster labelled Boris Johnson a “racist”.
The tweet in question is accompanied by a graphic of Nigel Farage, with a quote from 2015 in which he called the SNP “openly racist”.
The absolute cheek of an SNP politician casually accusing Boris Johnson of racism. For years the SNP has whipped up anti-English rhetoric to push its own agenda.
— Leave.EU (@LeaveEUOfficial) June 19, 2019
RT if you agree with Nigel Farage about the SNP's vile anti-English language!
“The SNP are openly racist,” Farage said in 2015. “The anti-English hostility and the kind of language that is used about and towards English people is totally extraordinary.”
The tweet which accompanies the image reads: “The absolute cheek of an SNP politician casually accusing Boris Johnson of racism. For years the SNP has whipped up anti-English rhetoric to push its own agenda.
“RT if you agree with Nigel Farage about the SNP's vile anti-English language!”
The tweet has approaching 700 responses, many of which take issue with the claim.
One such tweet lists several past and present SNP politicians who were born in England.
An SNP spokesperson said: "This bizarre outburst was nonsense in 2015 and it's nonsense today.
"Nigel Farage has a long track record of stirring up intolerance – views which are consistently rejected by people in Scotland and across the UK."
It comes after Ian Blackford used his time at yesterday’s Prime Minister’s Questions to label Johnson a racist.
READ MORE: Boris Johnson branded a racist by Ian Blackford at PMQs
He asked the current Prime Minister if she thought that the current frontrunner to replace her was fit for office given some of his racist statements in the past.
Theresa May did not answer the question directly.
Speaker of the House John Bercow intervened to tell the SNP leader at Westminster to be “extremely careful” what he said about Johnson and to withdraw any alleagtion of racism.
Blackford responded by listing some of the things the former foreign secretary had said in the past, including comparing women wearing burkas to “letterboxes” and saying that African people have “watermelon smiles”.
"If that is not racist, I do not know what is,” said Blackford.
Bercow did not respond to Blackford’s comments.
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