A man who claimed food bank users are “far from starving” is no longer a Scottish Tory candidate or member.
Craig Ross, who also had a dig at immigration and campaigning footballer Marcus Rashford, had been suspended after the Daily Record revealed his comments this morning.
He tweeted: "I've left the Conservative Party."
In an updated statement, a Scottish Tory spokesman said: “Craig Ross is no longer a candidate or a member of the party.”
Ross, who had been the Holyrood candidate for Glasgow Pollok, made a series of comments on his podcast.
In one episode, recorded last year, he claimed: “In this world of such tremendous hunger, in this world where people are routinely struggling to eat, in this world where people appear on Channel 4 News and talk about how their children eat but they don’t because they can’t afford to… almost everybody in that world is grossly overweight.
“And again people can’t accept this. People have no idea how fat they are.”
He added: “I’m not saying that every single person who claims to be really hungry and is reliant on charity is also very overweight, but what I am saying is if Channel 4 News is having a reasonable go at showing the reality of food bank usage, then we know that the people that they film are far from starving.
“If anything, their biggest risk is not starvation, it’s diabetes.”
On Rashford, the Manchester United striker who has been praised for his anti-poverty campaign, Ross said: “Has Marcus Rashford stood for election to anything? Not that I’m aware of.
“So should we turn our welfare policy upside down in order to suit Rashford’s view as to what would be decent?”
On immigration, he said: “We’ve taken everybody who has been mistreated by Slovakia, and said, ‘Come here, and work a little, and we will make it such that you have in effect won the lottery’."
He added: “This is the least racist country in the world.”
The current SNP MSP for Glasgow Pollok, Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf, had called for him to be dropped as the Tory candidate.
He tweeted: “The @ScotTories must sack their candidate for Glasgow Pollok.
“His remarks that those who use foodbanks ‘are far from starving’ are utterly heartless."
