Lisa Cameron likens quitting SNP to leaving an abusive marriage

Lisa Cameron, SNP MP for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow

MP Lisa Cameron has compared quitting the SNP to leaving an abusive marriage blighted by coercive control.

Speaking to The Sunday Post following her shock move to the Conservatives, Dr Cameron said: “I still feel psychologically battered and bruised by what the SNP did to me.

“Like a victim of coercive control in a domestic abuse situation, it will take me some time to come to terms with the years of bullying and misogyny that’s been thrown at me.

“But I know in my heart I have done the right thing. For the first time in my political career, I have felt supported and wanted.”

How PM reached out personally

She revealed that 10 days ago, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak personally reached out to her after hearing how her mental health worsened after being subjected to SNP bullying.

Dr Cameron said: “While none of the SNP leadership could even be bothered lifting the phone to ask if I was coping, here was the Prime Minister reaching out to me.

“It said everything about the humanity of the man that he had taken the time and made the effort to show he was concerned.

“Unlike any of the SNP leadership, the PM was hugely supportive of the campaigns and issues I have worked on, and he urged me to continue work and make a difference.”

Dr Cameron, who has represented East Kilbride & Strathaven since 2015, winning a plethora of awards for her work and recognition for championing the disabled, said that nothing she ever achieved was ever “good enough” for the SNP.

She said: “While some people received bunches of flowers for getting arrested, no matter how hard I worked or how many awards I received, or how many death threats I had from stalkers, there was never as much as a phone call from the leadership.

“In these last months when I finally decided to speak up about what was happening to me, being shunned and ostracised by my colleagues for daring to break rank over the Patrick Grady sex scandal, every single other party offered their support while the SNP only sniped and minimised the fact I’d had to undergo 12 months of counselling.”

MP reveals when bullying began

Dr Cameron said the “toxic bullying” began in earnest when she spoke up in concern for the teenage victim at the centre of the scandal over the sexual abuse by former SNP Westminster chief whip Patrick Grady, who had drunkenly pursued a young male party worker, touching him inappropriately.

At a meeting of the SNP’s Westminster group to discuss the scandal, when MP Ian Blackford, who was by then chief whip, ordered members to give their “full support” to Grady, Dr Cameron spoke up to ask: “Should we not be supporting the victim?”.

Dating her ostracisation from that point, Dr Cameron said she has “no regrets whatsoever about supporting a victim of sexual abuse”.

She said: “I had spent my professional life as a psychologist. I could never turn my back on a victim.

“The fact that I did what was right and moral and I was punished for it is far more revealing about the SNP than it is about me.”

But the toll of being bullied eventually did affect Dr Cameron’s health.

Even when that began to deteriorate to the level where she was being prescribed antidepressants, she claims the SNP continued their campaign against her, with snide remarks in the media from leading members.

Describing their behaviour as “shameful”, Dr Cameron said: “While it has been dreadfully hurtful to me, I think the nastiness has opened the eyes of the public to what the SNP are really like under the surface.

“Even when I said things had got so bad I had been prescribed antidepressants, the SNP leadership failed to reach out just to see if I was coping.

“But one leader did reach out personally to me, that was Rishi Sunak. I think it showed the measure of the man.

“His concern was in stark contrast to that shown by SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn, who had the audacity to say my experience of bullying within the party ‘did not reflect his experience’.

“There was no moment of reflection from Flynn about whether the party should look at itself. There was only denial.”

Last week, as her detractors were plotting to oust her from her seat, Dr Cameron delivered a political Exocet which left the SNP reeling.

Public ‘beginning to see the truth’

Hours before any constituency announcement, Dr Cameron revealed she was defecting to the Tories.

With steely aplomb, she said she will ignore calls from party leader Humza Yousaf to “stand down” from her seat.

And on the eve of the hugely important SNP party conference, she has labelled the party as “disconnected” from the people they are supposed to serve.

She said: “The public are beginning to see the truth about what really does lie beneath the surface of the SNP.

“Party finances are in a mess and it is rather ironic that they must now rely on Westminster funding.”

Humza Yousaf with Nicola Sturgeon. Image: DC Thomson.

Dr Cameron says despite Sturgeon standing down and Humza taking her place, there has been no “inner reflection” or “emotional intelligence” over what may be wrong with a party mired in sex and bullying scandals, or police investigations.

She said: “Humza was the continuity candidate so there’s little chance of him changing anything.”

Dr Cameron says she now feels independence is a divisive issue and believes there are far more pressing issues worrying families struggling with everyday problems.

Although she has now walked away from the SNP, she will leave her husband Mark Horsham to make his own mind up about the party he still represents, although last week he stepped back as a councillor in the Clydesdale ward of South Lanarkshire Council.

She said: “Mark will make his own mind up.

“I won’t influence him in any way, but I do know he has been deeply disappointed and upset over the way I have been treated by the party.”