Boorish Behaviour


I generally admired Alex Salmond while he was SNP leader and Scotland's First Minister, but ever since he stood down from these positions to become just another backbench MP/MSP I think Mr Salmond has rather lost his touch.

No more so than with his remarks the other day in which he said that Tony Benn would be 'birlin' in his grave at the speech from his son Hilary in the House of Commons, when he spoke in favour of extending military strikes against the Islamic State (IS) in Syria, as Labour's shadow defence spokesperson  

Unsurprisingly, the Benn family took exception to Mr Salmond's intervention, so much so that Emily Benn (Tony Benn's granddaughter) used Twitter to condemn his remarks as "deeply offensive" and called for them to be withdrawn.

Rather unwisely, in my view, Alex Salmond has stuck to his guns and refused to apologise,  as if he knows the mind of the former Labour politician even better than the Benn family themselves. 

I tweeted about this myself at the time and was encouraged to see at least one SNP MP in Stewart McDonald stand up to this kind of boorish behaviour.    



Mr Salmond, Your comments are both deeply offensive and simply untrue. I hope you reflect and retract them



Alex Salmond and Hilary Benn are both politicians, but the SNP MP is wrong to invoke HB's father to score points in a political disagreement



I voted differently to Hillary Benn. Using his father's death to make a political point - "spinning in his grave" - is repulsive.

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