THE former director of Better Together has challenged the SNP leadership to take tougher action after alleging several party members have sent death threats to political opponents.

Blair McDougall issued a call to Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell after he was targeted with abuse online.

SNP activist Mark Fagan, who has now been suspended, posted a message stating McDougall should be “swinging from a lamp post”.

Sharing the threat on social media, the former Scottish Labour strategist and candidate wrote: “Wake up to another SNP member talking about executing me. He says he's in the same seat as two SNP politicians who follow me. I don't expect they'll lift a finger. No SNP member ever has any of the other times I've shared SNP members posting fantasies about this. Just another day.”

A party spokesperson told the Herald: "The individual has had their membership suspended. There is no place in politics for abuse, threats or violence - be that online or offline. Attitudes like this are not welcome in the SNP." Afterwards, McDougall took to Twitter to call on the SNP leadership to do more.

The former Better Together director, in a thread that tagged the First Minister and the SNP chief executive, posted: “Now that they've set the precedent that it's wrong to talk about the execution of your opponents (a low bar, I know) let's test if they mean it...”

He said he knew of five examples of “SNP members who have posted about the execution of their opponents by hanging”, adding he would provide details of each member “on request” to Sturgeon and Murrell.

Without naming anyone, the former Labour strategist listed five alleged cases of party members sending online threats.

These included alleged posts which stated opposition politicians "should be hung for treason” and “hung drawn and quartered in independence square".

In a message to the SNP leadership, McDougall wrote: “I'm busy today so these were just put together in ten mins. They're far from the worst stuff posted by SNP members (the even worse hatred gets deleted by platforms these days). But five is an easily manageable number, so over to you…”

An SNP spokesperson said: "There is absolutely no excuse for abuse or threats in Scottish public life." 

The SNP said, as a result of McDougall’s posts, they would contact one person to let them know that such attitudes have no place in the party.

They added that the individual made this post in 2018 but didn’t join the SNP until 2021.

He is no longer active and isn’t known to the local branch, the SNP said.

The party added that only one of the five people cited by McDougall is an active member, but that they made the post four years prior to joining.