3 times politicians have landed in trouble for voting against their own party
With the SNP in crisis, the Scottish Tory leader suggesting people should vote Labour was perhaps a surprising move.
In a dramatic week where former first minister Nicola Sturgeon’s husband Peter Murrell was arrested in a probe over the SNP’s finances and their home was searched by police (Murrell has been released without charge as the investigation continues), Scottish Conservatives leader Douglas Ross suggested people should vote “tactically” to keep out the SNP.
He told the Sunday Telegraph: "I will always encourage Scottish Conservative voters to vote Scottish Conservatives, but I think generally the public can see, and they want the parties to accept, that where there is a strongest candidate to beat the SNP you get behind that candidate.”
A recent poll on general election voting intentions had Labour second behind the SNP by only five points.
Ross earned a swift rebuke from the central Conservative Party. "This is emphatically not the view of the Conservative Party,” a spokesperson said. “We want people to vote for Conservative candidates wherever they are standing as that's the best way to keep Labour and the SNP out."
Watch: Sunday's politics briefing
After Ross broke the party line, Yahoo News UK looks back on three recent occasions other politicians have landed themselves in trouble for voting against their own party.
21 Tory MPs suspended over Brexit vote
Amid the bitter Brexit war that played out in Parliament throughout 2019, 21 Tory MPs were suspended in September of that year after siding with opposition parties in a vote to prevent a “no-deal” exit from the EU.
The rebels in Boris Johnson’s crackdown included former chancellors Philip Hammond and Ken Clarke.
Ten of those 21 were readmitted to the party the following month as Johnson sought an election.
Alastair Campbell backing Lib Dems
Brexit divisions weren’t limited to the Conservatives in 2019. Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former spin doctor, was expelled from Labour after announcing on the BBC’s European election night coverage that he voted for the pro-Remain Liberal Democrats.
According to Campbell, the Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party had “let its own supporters down, let its own members down and I think it’s let the country down”.
Read more: Police ‘seize high-end campervan in SNP finances probe’
He was then kicked out of the party, which said “publicly declaring or encouraging support for another candidate or party is against the rules and is incompatible with party membership”.
Corbyn was actually a prolific voter against the Blair and Gordon Brown governments as a backbench MP between 1997 and 2010. While always campaigning for Labour, he voted against the Labour whip on 428 separate occasions.
Tory MP punished over cost of living vote
Tory MP Anne Marie Morris had the whip removed from the party last year after siding with Labour on a cost of living vote.
The Newton Abbot MP voted in favour of a Labour motion to cut VAT on energy bills, and was the only Tory to rebel.
She said afterwards: "It is deeply disappointing to have had the whip removed by the government, especially on a matter of simply standing up for what I believed to be the best interests of my constituents."
