A party full of hate shouldn’t be allowed to lead a nation, says former Labour MP TOM HARRIS

As Nicola Sturgeon herself once said: ‘Hate is not a good emotion in politics or anywhere else.’ The Scottish First Minister was right: hatred is a deeply corrosive force in political discourse. At best, it sows division – at worst, it risks putting public figures in harm’s way.

How telling, then, that just a couple of years on, Ms Sturgeon has revealed her true colours with her remark: ‘I detest the Tories.’

The comment, made in a BBC interview on Sunday, may have been designed to attract attention to the Scottish National Party conference this week.

But the fact that she doubled down ahead of her keynote speech yesterday – insisting that she didn’t regret her choice of words – shows that she really does feel that way towards political opponents who do not agree with her.

For all her EU-adoring, soft-on-immigration politicking, Ms Sturgeon’s mask slipped, revealing something she and her party have been trying to hide for many years: the true nature of the SNP.

Ms Sturgeon might have us believe that Scottish nationalism is tolerant, progressive and inclusive – as she insisted in her speech yesterday, ‘Scotland belongs to all of us’. Yet how inclusive can a movement really be when its leader expresses unashamed hatred for a quarter of the population of its own country just for voting a particular way?

The answer is not at all. Just like the rabid hard-Left, the movement for Scottish independence thrives off stoking conflict and resentment.

It is more than a little ironic that when Emily Thornberry (pictured) used a Labour leadership hustings event in 2020 to declare, ‘I hate the SNP’, she was roundly condemned

When Labour’s Rupa Huq said last month that Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng was only ‘superficially’ black, the message was clear: a difference of political opinion renders you unwelcome. The SNP is the same. In Ms Sturgeon’s vision of an independent Scotland, there is no room for anyone who doesn’t agree with her.

It is more than a little ironic that when Emily Thornberry used a Labour leadership hustings event in 2020 to declare, ‘I hate the SNP’, she was roundly condemned – including by Ms Sturgeon, who came out with that quote about hate having no place in political debate. But this was never a line she could stick to. After all, as we have seen frequently, Ms Sturgeon is most comfortable when dealing in base political attacks.

Indeed, readers may recall that when the SNP leader was asked about Liz Truss in August, rather than focusing on topics such as the economy or foreign policy, she chose to demean the then Tory leadership candidate by claiming Miss Truss had asked her ‘how to get into Vogue’.

We live in an age when social media, particularly Twitter, has become a toxic wasteland populated by bitter individuals happy to fire hate-bombs at anyone who holds a different opinion.

It is an age in which, more than ever, our politicians must rise above this and set an example by showing that healthy disagreement is an essential part of any democracy.

The brutal murders of Sir David Amess and Jo Cox stand testament to what happens when we let hatred win.

The SNP’s leader at Westminster, Ian Blackford, has desperately tried to row back on his boss’s comments, saying that he sees the Conservatives as his ‘opponents’, not his enemy.

But the damage is already done. And Mr Blackford knows as well as the rest of us that a party that can hate so easily should never be entrusted with the leadership of a nation.

Tom Harris was Labour MP for Glasgow South from 2001 to 2015