AN SNP MP has warned that the “raw misogyny” she has been subjected to since being elected six weeks ago has become normalised in the UK and will put young women off entering politics.
Lara Bird – who won the Arbroath and Brought Ferry by-election for the SNP in late June – quickly became a focus for attacks from political opponents who took issue with her crossing her fingers while swearing the MPs’ royal oath , and accused her of faking a Scottish accent .
The Scottish MP then found herself in the spotlight again after the BBC questioned why she would not support England in the World Cup .
Speaking to The National Podcast, Bird said she put the criticism she had faced into three different categories.
“There was just pure raw misogyny that I would have expected anyway,” she said. “You're a young woman suddenly in the public sphere, so you expect a certain level of misogyny.
“There were those who were really upset about the fact that I crossed my fingers – and I was okay with that criticism because I was making a statement. I stand by it. I would justify it, and that opens up a political debate, which is what I'm there to do.
Today, I was officially sworn in at Parliament. I took this Oath in order to serve the people of Arbroath and Broughty Ferry - and declared that my loyalty will always be to the people of Scotland. It is a privilege to serve and represent our communities as your Member of… pic.twitter.com/GP3ersApdx
— Lara Bird SNP (@larabirdsnp) June 22, 2026
“The third arm of criticism seemed to be people who were really upset about my accent and the fact that I had lived in England, and that was the style of criticism that really surprised, that I was not expecting.”
She added: “I thought fair enough, if you want to have a go at a young woman in politics, you'd expect that. If Unionists want to have a go at me making a statement by crossing my fingers, I would expect that. I did not expect so many people to get riled up by my accent.”
Bird then said that another aspect of the criticism of her accent was that everyone had been focusing on how she spoke – with the story even reaching Sky News Australia – but “no one was commenting on what it was that I had been saying”.
One of the key videos used by right-wing social media accounts to claim that Bird’s accent had changed from English to Scottish showed her arguing that the UK Government had “completely undermine[d] the humanity of the Palestinian people”.
Resharing it, Reform UK Scotland leader Malcolm Offord, for example, wrote that “the SNP candidate is putting on a fake Scottish accent!”.
Speaking to The National Podcast, Bird said: “When that video surfaced, not a single person commented on the actual substance of the video. It was all just on the way that I was presenting it and the way that I was speaking …
“People were more interested to comment and scrutinise my presentation than they were the substance.
“So maybe that indicates that either on that particular issue people weren't interested in what i was saying, or that actually people just want a quick Twitter-appropriate headline, which is ‘MP has dodgy accent’ or whatever, and actually that's easier for people to latch onto than actually dissecting the content.”
Bird further told The National that a shifting accent was something she had “to get used to” as a result of having grown up in Scotland with a Scottish father, but lived in England with an English mother.
She added: “I think the people that were criticising me for it, or the people that were surprised by or didn't understand it, typically tended not to be people who were from Scotland, because people who are from Scotland generally understand that our accents can be a huge melting pot of things, and that that's a really good thing.”
Bird went on to caution that the “hate” she had experienced in the six weeks since entering politics could put young women off running for parliament, which would weaken democracy as a whole.
“It is frustrating because I think lots of people would say that we need to have more diversity in politics and we need to be more accessible for the general public, and that has to include bringing people who come from different backgrounds, more women, more young people,” she said.
“But as soon as we have people who demonstrate those qualities or might be young women, there is such a backlash that actually the young women who might be looking to enter politics are really put off by that. That's the thing that I find the most frustrating.”
“What I don't want is for other young women in my constituency, across Scotland, across the whole UK, to look at the experience that I've had and go, ‘well, I can't do that’, because that doesn't serve our national political conversation, and it doesn't serve our democracy.
“We need young women in politics. And I think that the ease and comfortability of directing so much hatred towards me can be pinpointed at the lack of accountability on social media as one example, because so much of the hate that I get is online, and so much of the criticism that I get is online.
“We know that people feel more comfortable saying things online that they would never say in person, but that's a problem, and that's a problem that we need to address. Because if you've got these nameless, faceless bots or accounts on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook who feel really comfortable saying all these horrible things about me, or about other women, or about other people in the political sphere or in the public sphere, and nobody questions that, then it's perpetuating how normal that is.”
You can watch the full episode of The National Podcast with Lara Bird on YouTube, or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
