Point of clarification. She wasn't suspended, she resigned "voluntarily". How hard her arm may have been twisted is another matter.
This is just part of the pernicious consequences of having almost the entire Scottish media virulently and venomously opposed to the Scottish government. It has been noted by independent commentators on the state of NHS Scotland that necessary/desirable reforms simply cannot be undertaken in this climate because the anti-SNP press would inevitably pillory the government mercilessly and in so doing talk down the NHS and its staff even further.
Similarly here, where the MP in question wasn't even under investigation. A solicitor she had used in connection with property transactions which took place several years before she was elected to parliament was investigated. She had resigned from the company she was with at the time these transactions took place, before she took her seat in the house. She was named as a possible witness, not a suspect.
Nevertheless the media reported that she was under investigation for mortgage fraud (untrue) and that the solicitor in question was her business partner (also untrue). They also started pillorying the woman over the actual deals she had done, which were the property equivalent of webuyanycar.com. She bought houses that were stuck on the market, tidied them up a bit and sold them at a profit when the market was more buoyant. Reporters traced a couple of the sellers, told them how much their houses had realised when they were sold on, and whipped them up into a frenzy of "we were cheated by that awful profiteering woman" fury, which they then reported.
There was no chance at all of the other side of the story getting an airing in the press or the broadcast media. The BBC itself was leading the charge, with this summary showing how it was done.
https://wingsoverscotland.com/the-bad-losers/ It kept this up even after the investigation (into the solicitor) was dropped, larding the coverage with innuendo that she was really guilty of something.
The SNP had little option but to try to distance itself from her. If they'd stood by her, all that would have happened would have been that the party and the Scottish government were pilloried for defending someone guilty of fraud and who tricked poor people out of the true value of their homes.
The same thing happened in 2015 when a candidate at the general election (Neil Hay) was pilloried for a few pretty innocuous tweets made three years previously under a pseudonym. He was accused of saying that pensioners should be denied the vote, when all he'd done was muse about the paradox of people in the advanced stages of dementia ("don't even know what day of the week it is") having the right to vote. It was outrageous, but the SNP didn't say a word in his defence.
I agree, it's not a satisfactory state of affairs. It leads to gross injustice, as with Michelle Thomson who absolutely fits in the category being discussed in this thread. But it's the inevitable consequence of a media establishment that is rabidly against the SNP.
Now of course the new developments have also been turned into #SNPbad column inches. Isn't Nicola Sturgeon a bitch for not standing by Michelle Thomson who was of course innocent except she wasn't and we hung her out to dry at the time. Congratulations for leaping on to that bandwagon.
