David Leask: It's not just nationalists who have to say sorry for their cybernats - it's unionists, too

More often than not they would telegraph their discomfort in advance.

Chatting to reporters, they first tended to lull into silence, gathering their thoughts, or shift awkwardly in their seats.

And then would come the excuses, some better than others, for not dealing with the dysfunctional, counter-productive and often abusive social media warriors they knew were undermining their cause.

Look, this is terrible, they would say, but we can’t be held responsible. We don’t even know who these people are; they’re not even necessarily in the party.

The truth? Senior SNP figures from time to time really have tried to handle their cybernat problem.

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Sometimes they have cajoled, flattered and even flirted with key bloggers and influencers, trying to lure them into the mainstream and away from the KoolAid of online conspiracism.

At other times they have tried to get tough, especially when identifiable members were abusive.

But the relationship between the SNP and the cybernats - by which I mean problematic online nationalists, not any nationalist with a social media account - was always tricky.

After all, some of the people hiding behind anonymous Twitter handles were to be found among activists.

So too were some of those who religiously read the most misleading blogs.

Party leaders had twigged they had a problem, but they also knew fixing it meant challenging parts of their base.

The result? The party was never quite able to stamp out the scourge of cybernats. Or sufficiently distance itself from it.

At least, possibly, until now.

Yesterday something changed. A turning-point was reached, a rubicon was crossed.

And all because of one blog. Well, a post that was the pretext allies of party leader Nicola Sturgeon needed to finalise their break with the “extremely online” and increasingly anti-SNP wing of nationalism. Yesterday very senior party figures, including at least one cabinet minister, queued up to condemn a frankly dangerous publication by the biggest cybernat influencer, a Bath-based video games reviewer turned blogger named Stuart Campbell.

Mr Campbell, who goes by the online handle Wings over Scotland, had launched yet another attack on a mainstream Scottish journalist.

This time his target was Neil Mackay, a former editor of the pro-independence Sunday Herald.

Campbell baselessly insinuated that Neil - he’s a friend and colleague so I’ll call him by his first name - was not the Yesser he appears to be because he hails from Antrim in Northern Ireland.

Worse, Campbell openly described a recent column of Neil’s as an “exemplar of the infiltrator’s craft”.

Calling journalists infiltrators and falsely claiming they are dishonest about their political views is always dangerous.

In a Northern Ireland context, it is reckless. Bluntly, it is potentially deadly.

According to comments at the foot of the article, readers of Campbell’s blog concluded that Neil was a loyalist.

One, chillingly, wrote: “Sounds to me as though Mackay is a British state actor”.

Yet, of course, Antrim has people from a mix of backgrounds. People, in fact, much like Neil, whose parents come from different communities and who has publicly supported a united Ireland.

As an investigative journalist, Neil exposed violent hardline loyalism and republicanism.

So claims he is of a loyalist background have, it is understood, provoked police involvement.

There was another aspect of the raised eyebrows. Campbell - in a now-deleted section of his blog - brought up a sex crime carried out by a stranger against a woman with a connection to Neil.

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Condemnation of this publication was swift and it was firm.

Humza Yousaf, the justice secretary and a politician regularly targeted online by racists and unionist extremists, tweeted to Neil: “I am sorry you have been targeted in this way, and also due to your nationality.

“Very nasty indeed, but not altogether surprised given the source.”

But not everybody in the SNP distanced themselves from Wings.

Kenny MacAskill, Mr Yousaf’s predecessor but one as justice secretary, shared the blog on his Twitter feed.

Joanna Cherry, a critic of Ms Sturgeon who has herself been the victim of shocking abuse and threats, liked a tweet featuring the blog.

These little social media “likes” and “retweets” cause a real headache for Scotland’s news media.

How do we cover Mr MacAskill and Ms Cherry? Are we to pretend we don’t know they have - perhaps inadvertently - appeared to endorse a blog which endangers a journalist? Is it business as usual? Can it be?

For some, mainstream nationalism’s clear rejection of Wings over Scotland is too little, too late. Yet, in reality, this rift has been a long time coming.

Bloggers like Campbell in recent years have transformed from the most ferocious and zealous defenders of the SNP into its most vitriolic and unfair critics.

Unionists last night revelled in the SNP’s angst over the Wings blog. We told you so, they said.

Blair MacDougall, the former head of the pro-UK Better Together campaign, has been the target of cybernats.

Today on Twitter he noted some SNP politicians had now “hastily” deleted endorsements of Wings.

Yet unionism has its own problems with internet extremists. Cyberyoons, for want of a better word, have more in common with cybernats that with, say, Mr MacDougall.

Me? I think the two largely anonymous groups are basically the same weirdos, but with a liking for different flags.

Moreover, radicalised internet unionists are now developing a hyper-partisan ecosystem not dissimilar to the one on the Yes side. This cesspit is brimming with disinformation and conspiracism.

Will the ‘cyberyoons’ turn on the mainstream opponents of independence? Some already have. They have also started abusing working journalists.

(We news media people, I guess, are like canaries in the mine when it comes to dysfunctional online politics.)

So, it is no longer just nationalists who have to sheepishly say sorry for their cybernats.

It’s unionists too.