Saturday 22 December 2007

Breaking the rules.


Mr Smith is amazed at how little coverage the conclusion of a Sunday Herald investigation into the illegal sublet of office space within Prime Minister Gordon Brown MP's Kirkcaldy office has generated.

The article published in Sunday's Sunday Herald highlighted the apparent admission by staff working for Gordon Brown that a sublet of office space to MSP colleague Marilyn Livingstone, as well as the local Labour Party, breached House of Commons rules with the result that the sublet has been modified to be from Ms Livingstone to the local Labour Party with the PM not involved any longer in the deal.

Given the current political climate, you would have thought the story would have merited further coverage somewhere, but it didn't even make it onto the Sunday Herald's website. Why we wonder?

And given similar difficulties experienced by former Labour First Minister Henry McLeish several years ago which lead to his eventual downfall, why is that it is apparently acceptable for a Member of the Scottish Parliament to sublet space to her local Party, but not apparently OK for a Westminster Member of Parliament to do exactly the same? Strange. Very strange.

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