20:04

Jackson Carlaw, the interim Scottish Tory leader, has had a spat on Twitter with Nicola Sturgeon and her Brexit secretary, Mike Russell, after he tweeted that he had voted this morning in his East Renfrewshire constituency, 12 days after stating on Twitter he had sent in his postal vote.

An eagle-eyed voter flagged the apparent discrepancy, to Sturgeon’s amusement.

Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) Oh dear 😂 https://t.co/rl0QbJ3Zz9

Russell, the Scottish government’s cabinet secretary for constitutional relations, was more pointed.



He tweeted: “Eh? Surely not as voting twice would be a criminal offence. Whereas tweeting something that isn’t true for electoral effect is just crass and dishonest …”

Carlaw, who holds the contiguous Scottish parliament seat of Eastwood, protested to both Sturgeon and Russell he had just made two proxy votes, both for Tory candidate Paul Masterton.

Jackson Carlaw MSP (@Jackson_Carlaw) Even I thought @Feorlean was better than this insinuation.



I cast two Proxy Votes this morning on behalf of constituents.



Will he and @NicolaSturgeon be as quick to publicly apologise? https://t.co/WCwTnMEeEb

East Renfrewshire is an SNP target seat, and is often a barometer of Scotland’s shifting political mood. The Tories took it from the SNP in 2017 with a 4,712 majority, while the SNP had taken it from Labour’s then Scottish leader Jim Murphy in 2015 in its remarkable landslide. The previous Westminster seat of Eastwood had long been Tory-held until Murphy won it first in 1997.

