Neale Hanvey, the candidate sacked by the Scottish National party over antisemitic social media posts, will still be announced as the SNP MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath if he wins on Thursday.
Hanvey has continued campaigning to win, using the SNP’s yellow colour and typefaces, despite being officially dropped by the party after he admitting two weeks ago to two antisemitic posts, one using material from the Kremlin-funded Sputnik website.
Fife council has said because Hanvey was dropped after nominations closed, he will be described as the SNP’s candidate when the results are declared.
That raises the stakes for the SNP, since Nicola Sturgeon has been highly critical of Labour’s failure to tackle its antisemitism crisis. Hanvey’s party membership was suspended when he was dropped as its candidate; it still needs to put him through a full disciplinary hearing or allow him to rejoin the party. He wants to be readmitted.
Fife council has also said the SNP has not officially told its returning officer Hanvey has been dropped. The council said on Tuesday morning it has only had an email from Hanvey’s SNP election agent, David Barratt, simply saying he was no longer in that post.
The SNP disputed that. “Fife council was informed on 29 November,” a spokesman said. “We would expect the returning officer to be fully aware that political parties have no ability under electoral law to withdraw a candidate after the close of nominations.”
Although Hanvey has been publicly disavowed by the SNP and Nicola Sturgeon, Scottish Labour officials still believe he could beat the Labour incumbent Lesley Laird, who regained the seat for Labour by a very narrow 259-vote margin in 2017.
They say SNP activists have ignored an instruction from Sturgeon to stop campaigning for Hanvey. His Facebook page still carries SNP videos and his leaflets reproduce the ballot paper which shows his name beside the SNP logo.
Labour officials believe the SNP has deliberately taken a soft-touch approach to avoid alienating activists. “They could be so much more robust than they have been,” said one. After the Labour candidate in Falkirk was sacked for antisemitism, every Labour members was stood down. “You won’t find anyone campaigning for that candidate,” he said.
