FORMER Better Together Campaign Director Blair McDougall has urged Nicola Sturgeon to take action against SNP members calling for the “execution of their opponents”. 

The ex-Labour spin doctor’s plea to the First Minister came after an independence campaigner tweeted him to say that he should be “swinging from a lamp post”.

After that individual was suspended Mr McDougall took to Twitter to share details of five other “SNP members who have posted about the execution of their opponents by hanging”. 

Tagging Ms Sturgeon and SNP Chief Executive Peter Murrell into his posts, he named one person who he said was a party member in Perth and North Perthshire who “messaged an MP to warn them to put their affairs in order as it was ‘another day closer to being strung up and hanged from the Forth Bridge’." 

While another in Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock, Mr McDougall said, had “messaged an opposing MP to say they ‘should be hung for treason', specifically by the genitals”.

Another example, given by Mr McDougall was someone he said was a party member in Kate Forbes’ Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch constituency who “posts about how an opposing MP should ‘be hung drawn and quartered in independence square’.”

Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser shared Mr McDougall’s tweets, writing: "Every pro-UK politician I know is wearily familiar with being called a Quisling/traitor/uncle Tom on a regular basis, but what Blair highlights is on a different level. Time for @theSNP to clean out the stable."

However, the SNP said of the five examples listed by Mr McDougall only one was definitely a party member. 

Three others weren’t, and the other was anonymous, so it was impossible to tell.

The party said the one who is an SNP member had made his post in 2018 but didn’t join up until recently.

They also said he wasn’t active or known to the local branch, but that they would be contacting him to let him know that attitudes like that have no place in the SNP. 

An SNP spokesperson said: "There is absolutely no excuse for abuse or threats in Scottish public life." 

Over the weekend Ian Blackford, the SNP Westminster leader, called for a new push to tackle the toxic culture of “keyboard warriors” on social media.

Speaking to The Sunday Times, he said: “It is not long since the tragic deaths of David Amess and Jo Cox, and there is hardly a day goes past without threats of violence against politicians and intolerance at scale against others in the political space. People need to be allowed to do their jobs.”