CHRIS WATT • PA Ruth Davidson accused Jeremy Corbyn of “siding with terrorists"

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Dubbing Labour “the new nasty party”, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives said it was unforgivable that Corbyn and the shadow chancellor had “walked past the people who were trying to solve peace in Northern Ireland and went straight to the guys wearing balaclavas that were setting off bombs and shooting people.” At the height of the conflict, Corbyn spoke at official republican commemorations honouring dead IRA terrorists. He used one event in 1988 to attack the Anglo-Irish Agreement, the precursor of the peace process. McDonnell also has a long association with the Irish terror group. In 2004 he was given a special award by Sinn Fein and another IRA-supporting body for the “unfailing political and personal support he has given to the republican community in the Six Counties over many years”.

The award was presented to him by Gerry Kelly, the IRA terrorist who bombed the Old Bailey, killing one and injuring almost 200. Although both men claim to have promoted the peace process, they were closely associated with groups vitriolically hostile to the peaceful, constitutional nationalists of the SDLP. Davidson, 37, who served as a Signaller in the Territorial Army from 2003 to 2006, added: “During the 80s and 90s they could have backed the SDLP. There were people who were democratically looking for change there and yet they went straight to the guys who were setting off bombs and decided they were going to side with the terrorists against the British Army, saying we won’t stand up for our own country. "I don’t think they will ever be elected.”

GETTY Corbyn's shadow chancellor John McDonnell also has a long association with the Irish terror group

She also laid into Corbyn for failing to address anti-Semitism within the party.

During the 80s and 90s they could have backed the SDLP Ruth Davidson

Referencing Jewish MP Ruth Smeeth, who walked out of a Labour event in tears after being accosted by a Corbyn supporter, Davison said: “She was being anti-Semitically abused in public in front of Jeremy Corbyn and he didn’t open his mouth. I feel so sorry for that MP, that her own party is abusing her in this way. “If the Tories had been guilty of this kind of behaviour we would have been on the front page of every newspaper every single day, and rightly so.” The Remain campaigner also took aim at Nicola Sturgeon, accusing the Scottish First Minister of “shamelessly” hijacking the Brexit vote to push for a second Scottish independence referendum.

Jeremy Corbyn in pictures Tue, July 12, 2016 Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn takes part in a community meeting at the Guru Har Rai Gurdwara Sahib temple Play slideshow Reuters 1 of 36 Britain's opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn speaks at an anti-racism rally in London

“The thing that I find most disreputable is that Nicola Sturgeon has spent the past two months trying to use my Remain vote and thousands of Scots like me to coop that into trying to leave the United Kingdom, and that’s not what anybody was voting on. “Within three and a half hours of the last local authority announcing the EU referendum result, Nicola Sturgeon said she had already instructed government officials to start drawing up legislation for a second independence referendum. "That was the thing she went to first. She didn’t take stock, she didn’t wait to reassure the country, she didn’t look to be a First Minister of all Scots, she played directly to her nationalist base, and it’s telling.”

PA The SNP leader last week claimed Brexit would cost Scotland £11 billion a year