Margaret Ferrier: Who’s the MP who broke Covid guidelines?

Margaret Ferrier has been suspended from the SNP and faces calls to resign after taking a prepare from London to Scotland understanding that she had examined optimistic for Covid-19. However who’s Margaret Ferrier?

The 60-year-old first grew to become an MP in 2015 within the SNP landslide that noticed the get together take 56 of the 59 seats in Scotland.

Ms Ferrier, who gained Rutherglen and Hamilton West, pulled off one of many largest shocks on an evening stuffed with surprises.

Her victory overturned a Labour majority of 21,002 – one of many largest within the UK – and she or he ended up the winner by 9,975 votes.

Margaret Ferrier was 54 when she was chosen to be the SNP candidate and had solely joined the get together 4 years earlier.

Quickly after changing into an MP she advised the Rutherglen Reformer she couldn’t keep in mind a time when she didn’t help an impartial Scotland.

Whilst a member of the Labour Get together in her youth, she felt the nation ought to go it alone, she stated.

Born within the south of Glasgow she lived for nearly two years of her childhood in Spain.

She advised the Reformer she had early reminiscences of correcting individuals in Spain after they known as her English.

“I wasn’t English, I used to be Scottish, so I all the time had that Scottish identification, even from the age of 12,” she stated.

Ms Ferrier returned to Scotland in 1972 and settled together with her household in Rutherglen.

She is alleged to have had a eager curiosity in politics since her early 20s and was a member of Amnesty Worldwide.

Earlier than changing into an MP she had labored as a industrial gross sales supervisor for a producing building firm in Motherwell.

Though she stated she voted for the SNP on numerous events, she didn’t be a part of the Rutherglen department of the get together till 2011.

She shortly established herself within the native get together and was a candidate for the council elections in 2013.

She stated she was initially reluctant to contest the Westminster seat in 2015 and admitted on the time that some potential candidates might have been postpone by the prospect of taking up an enormous Labour majority

Her shock win was adopted by defeat within the snap election of 2017 when Ged Killen regained the seat for Labour with a slender majority of 265

In December, final 12 months, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon visited Rutherglen to supply her help for Margaret Ferrier as she campaigned efficiently to win again the seat in one other snap election.

In Might, Ms Ferrier was one of many MPs who known as on the prime minister’s adviser Dominic Cummings to resign within the wake of the controversy over his go to to the North East of England throughout lockdown.

On the time, she stated his actions had “undermined the sacrifices that we now have all been making in lockdown to guard one another from coronavirus” and described his place as “untenable”.

On Thursday, it emerged that Ferrier had travelled from Glasgow to London with Covid-19 signs, then returned residence by prepare after testing optimistic.

Nicola Sturgeon was fast to sentence her actions as “harmful and indefensible”.

The SNP chief later known as “with a heavy coronary heart” for her to resign as an MP.