Within the meteor storm of the 56 SNP MPs that arrived in Westminster in 2015 after the independence referendum, Natalie McGarry was a star within the making.
Having already established herself a voice within the Girls for Independence marketing campaign, the then-34-year-old got here out swinging towards the British institution and crusading for impoverished voters within the Glasgow East seat she gained with a 31 per cent swing to the SNP.
McGarry got here from a dynasty of SNP campaigners. Her mom was a distinguished Fife councillor and her aunt, Tricia Marwick, turned an SNP MSP and presiding officer of the Holyrood parliament.
Nonetheless, it rapidly turned obvious that McGarry, like some others within the new band of MPs, had not undergone a rigorous SNP choice course of and had been elevated past her capability.
The time period “maverick” covers lots of political behaviour however McGarry rapidly discovered herself within the headlines for the improper causes.
There was a twitter spat with JK Rowling and an out of court docket settlement with the top of the Scotland in Union group after intemperate and false claims made on-line by the MP.
She was nearly arrested after utilizing her cell phone in Turkey close to a safety level near the Syrian border and needed to be freed by the intervention of the British Embassy.
Though she described Westminster as an “out of contact establishment” she had her wedding ceremony to David Meikle, a Glasgow Conservative councillor, blessed within the palace’s historic Chapel of St Mary Undercroft.
She later turned up within the Commons chamber for a commemorative photograph of the 2015 consumption of feminine MPs carrying her wedding ceremony gown.
McGarry's starlight guttered fairly rapidly when she was accused by fellow campaigners of swindling pro-independence teams and donations raised for Scotland’s poorest households.
Suspended from the SNP group in Westminster in 2016, she carried on as an MP till 2017 when she didn't search re-election.
At an earlier trial in 2019, she tried to withdraw two responsible pleas of embezzlement from Girls for Independence and the SNP Glasgow regional affiliation. Her conviction was quashed and a retrial ordered.
On Thursday, after a six week trial, she was discovered responsible of embezzling £25,000 from two pro-independence teams and can face sentencing later.