RUTH Davidson is coming under pressure to kick out a senior party member who claimed Nicola Sturgeon had faked her miscarriage.
We revealed yesterday, that Jane Lax, the party’s treasurer in Moray, had traded jokes about the SNP leader’s baby loss with other Unionists on Twitter.
The Tories then suspended her and promised she would be subject to a “disciplinary procedure”.
But SNP MSP Gail Ross has warned Davidson against trying to sweep the row under the carpet.
On Tuesday, the anonymous Twitter account, Agent P shared an interview in which Sturgeon detailed the abuse she receives online.
Replying, Georgina Sparrow, a retired midwife from Dumfrieshire with a record of organising pro-union campaigns, tweeted: “Has she mentions [sic] her fictional miscarriage yet?”
Lax then replied: “Is that when she dropped a book?”
The exchange has been condemned across the parties, nationally and locally.
Tim Eagle, leader of the Tory Group on Moray Council, said the comments made by Lax had been “damaging”.
He said: “This is not acceptable, personal lives should not come into politics and this was not acceptable in any sense of the word. It is to my understanding that Jane has been suspended and is pending disciplinary action.
“This will be handled in Edinburgh, I believe, and we are happy to work alongside with the process.”
Ross, the SNP MSP for Caithness, Sutherland and Ross, said: ”This was appalling behaviour, and Ms Lax should be ashamed.
“No politician should have to face these vile comments, and it’s sickening to see this kind of attitude rearing its head within the Scottish Tory party again.
“This case cannot be swept under the carpet - the Scottish Tories must make the outcome of their disciplinary procedure public.”
Lax - who was out campaigning with the party just days ago - was at the centre of a storm earlier this year when she was one four Tories in the audience for an edition of Question Time broadcast from Elgin.
Shortly after our story broke the Moray conservatives deleted all mentions of Lax from their Facebook page, but some of the party’s politicians weren’t so ruthless.
At the time of going to print MP David Duguid still had a picture of him and Lax on his Twitter feed, in which he described the activist as a “legend”.
Moray MP Douglas Ross meanwhile had a picture of him alongside Lax and others campaigning taken on August 17.
On Monday, the First Minister spoke out about some of the abuse she receives online, describing it as “horrible, misogynist, really filthy, disgusting stuff.”
Sturgeon revealed in 2016 that she and husband Peter Murrell had lost a baby while she was serving as deputy First Minister.
In an interview for the book, Scottish National Party Leaders, Sturgeon disclosed that she had suffered a miscarriage when she was 40, shortly before the 2011 Scottish parliamentary election campaign period.
In a statement released following the publication of extracts from the book in the Sunday Times magazine, the first minister said: “Sometimes, for whatever reason, having a baby just doesn’t happen – no matter how much we might want it to.
She added: “For me, as for many women, all of these things have been true at different times of my life – the point is that judgements and assumptions shouldn’t be made about what are personal choices”.
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