Wendy Alexander to stand down...

[rhythmaning]

The BBC is reporting that Wendy Alexander is expected to resign as leader of the Labour party in Scotland this afternoon.

This is quite interesting, and I don't fully understand it. Why now?

Ms Alexander has been embroiled in an election funding scandal since the late autumn; it has dragged on and on.

The Scottish Parliament standards committee voted to censure her on Thursday - the last day the Parliament sat before its recess. The punishment - a one day ban from Parliament - needs a full vote of the Parliament before it can be implemented, which means it has to wait until Parliament next sits, in September.

Ms Alexander has "toughed it out" since the Sunday Herald (I think it was the Herald) broke the story.

The time to go would have been early on. By staying on, she has been distracted, and not the best opposition to wiley Alec Salmond. Resigning now means that there will be no leadership for the Labour Party in Scotland for the next three months. (True, it is possible nobody will notice.)

It will be interesting to see how this progresses...

Edit: The Beeb was right - Wendy Alexander has resigned.

Comments

[matgb]

Recess for three months, means they can have a leadership campaign outside of session, so they just get publicity about that with Salmond heckling from the Chamber.

It also means that when the new session starts, they can have a new leader in place to start a fresh attack untainted, and can also argue the case in the full vote from an 'unbiased' perspective.

Probably. Depends on who they can get to run, I don't know what talent, if any, Scots Labour has in Holyrood.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

I agree - I can't really see who they'll get as leader.

Labour have been pretty poor at choosing leaders for the Scottish party - Wendy cheated, Jack failed, the guy before (so memorable I can't even remember his name...) - ok, it was Henry McLeish (thanks to Wikipedia!) - cheated, and, sadly, Donald died.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

Although, thinking about it, I am not sure I agree with you - I doubt the Labour party up here will be able to find people to stand (and let's not forget, Wendy was another shoe-in - indeed, the finance she was chastised for was totally unnecessary, since she didn't need to run a campaign!) during the recess, because as far as I can tell, they are all away on their holidays.

So no one will be around to organise an election.

And it won't be done by September...