Police Scotland has blamed a “frozen laptop screen” after sharing a social media post supporting Scottish independence on its official social media account.
The force came under fire after retweeting a post backing ‘Scexit’ from a nationalist going by the X, formerly Twitter, handle @Macnessie in June.
It read: “This will now test the Sovereignty of Scots. It has always been acknowledged (even by westminster) that Scots are sovereign.
“So legally this will be the will of the people using current Westminster rules to instruct the @scotgov to end the union. What’s not the like?”
The post came after an interview with Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf on the BBC where he claimed his party would hold a second independence referendum as soon as it possibly could.
Mr Yousaf had delivered a speech at an SNP independence convention where the Scottish leader said he would seek talks to break up Britain if the party won a majority of seats at the next general election.
Police Scotland claimed at the time of the retweet that it had been done by accident and was due to a “computer error”.
The force was slammed by unionist commentators who asked why Police Scotland was endorsing “nationalist talking points”. Police Scotland has faced accusations it is too close to SNP ministers, according to the Scottish Daily Express.
The same publication has revealed the real reason given by the force was that a frozen laptop screen caused them to retweet the message in a mishap.
They said: “I can advise you that a staff member intended to retweet a Scottish Government post relating to issues with the 999 call service.
“Their laptop screen froze momentarily and the staff member clicked retweet again. When the page responded, a message next to the Government post had been retweeted in error.
“It was immediately obvious the wrong message had been retweeted and our Corporate Communications team took steps to delete it within minutes.
“It was not an official retweet by Police Scotland, nor was it a member of staff retweeting from what they thought was their personal account.”
There was no explanation why Macnessie’s original post had appeared on the force’s feed in the first place. It was deleted within minutes of it happening after an uproar on the social media account.
Former Scottish Police Federation boss Calum Steele joked: “Masterful stroke by @PoliceScotland to distract the ‘unionist ploy’ conspiracists regarding the investigation into the SNP finances”.
