SNP candidate and Yes organiser likened pro-UK supporters to Nazis

Neil Hay, the SNP candidate for Edinburgh South, has admitted that he has been anonymously running an abusive Twitter account – which he used to accuse Better Together supporters of being “quislings”.

Hay, under the pseudonym Paco McSheepie, said that elderly voters “barely know their own name” and accused Ian Murray, his Labour opponent, of spending too much time on Twitter, apparently without irony.

The former Yes organiser in Edinburgh South tweeted that pro-UK supporters were “Quislings”, a reference to the leader of the pro-Nazi puppet government of Norway in the 1940s.

Scottish Labour are calling on Nicola Sturgeon to sack Hay, as the SNP leader has recently said that use of the word “quislings” has no place in democratic debate.

Deputy leader of Scottish Labour Kezia Dugdale was unequivocal:

“Nicola Sturgeon must sack Neil Hay. When a journalist was called a quisling recently the SNP leader said that kind of language has absolutely no place in democratic political debate.

“This is a test for Nicola Sturgeon. Does she think it is acceptable for a parliamentary candidate to use an anonymous account to abuse his opponents? Does she think it is acceptable to compare the majority of Scots to Nazi collaborators?”

Hay claims the views expressed by him in the account are “not in keeping with the way I would express myself now.” He says that he has “moved on” and deleted the account – however, Edinburgh Evening News report the account was used earlier this month, and was only deleted after the paper approached the SNP about it.

It’s not just his abusive sock puppet that has been tweeting questionable things. After one of the debates between Scottish leaders earlier this month, a Glasgow based solicitor raised the issue of lack of BME representation, to which Hay replied complaining about the “disproportionate number of non Scots accents”: