Ash Regan is no stranger to headlines. She made them when she rebelled against the Scottish Government’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill, when she stood for the SNP leadership and, most recently, when she defected to the Alba Party.

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Today she comes in for stinging criticism from one of our readers.

Robert Menzies of Falkirk writes:

"I have long been intrigued by Ash Regan. Or rather, I’ve been intrigued trying to work out what she stands for. She was elected to parliament on a manifesto that included gender reform, only to storm out in protest when the parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour of this very measure.

Whilst I can understand it was a personal vote too far for her, what about the constituents she claimed to represent and who voted for that manifesto? She will no doubt assert (as she has done recently) that these same constituents were focused solely on independence. But how does that square with her previous comment that “independence cannot be a carrot deployed only to attract voters during election times”?

Perhaps she should have followed Lisa Cameron’s even more bizarre rebellion by joining the Conservatives with their new vote-winning strategy of a permanently revolving leadership. She would have probably been at home sitting beside their Scottish leader at Holyrood where she could ask the same question that she will now no doubt be asking the leader of Alba, namely: “Can you tell me where we are headed so that I can tell the press this is what my constituents voted for?”