Back to the Tearoom

Well it was high drama at Holyrood yesterday when my Labour opponent Malky Chisholm resigned from the Scottish Executive over Labour’s support for replacing Trident.

As readers of the blog will remember last week I mentioned one of the rumours doing the rounds was …

“Another rumour goes that a Minister’s constituency staff has been responding to a constituent’s enquiry about a topic in the Minister’s brief by saying that they wouldn`t take the enquiry forward as the Minister “won’t be in the post for much longer. If they don`t walk then they’ll be forced out eventually anyway”. Again we’ll have to see if they were just fobbing off a constituent or if there is something more to it.”

As you may by have now guessed the Minister who was the subject of the rumour was our very own Malcolm Chisholm.

By the sounds of things Malky was forced out by his Labour colleagues on the Executive. Apprently up to 4 of the Labour members of the Executive (Cathy Jamieson, Margaret Curran…?) are also anti-Trident but had toed the party line on these weapons of mass destruction. They weren`t best pleased when Malky broke ranks. As I mentioned in a previous post when he came out and spoke against Trident a couple of weeks ago there was speculation about just when he would be pushed.

In fairness to Malky unlike those who forced him out he at least voted with his conscious on this issue (although he has bitten his tongue in the past on other issues he strongly disagrees with) unlike the other Labour cabinet members.

From here I suspect we move into a few weeks over the Xmas period of speculation on his replacment. McConnell’s problem is he is shuffling an increasingly limited deck that is heavily focus towards the west of Scotland. But more on that later.