15.11.2001
SSP sees off McLeish
Former first minister of the Scottish parliament, Henry McLeish, has been thoroughly exposed as incompetent, arrogant and ?economical with the truth?. Despite being caught desperately trying to cover up financial irregularities in his constituency office funding - and almost getting away with it - McLeish, the latest in a succession of disgraced Labour politicians, intends to continue as MSP for Central Fife.
The prospect of him picking up his MSP salary (?42,000) and his ex-first minister pension (?34,000) has prompted Scottish Socialist Party convenor Tommy Sheridan to call for his resignation from the Scottish parliament. Comrade Sheridan compared McLeish?s ?disgraceful? pension handout to the paltry amount most pensioners have to live on and suggested it was no wonder that so many people were ?disillusioned with politics and politicians?.
McLeish, facing a censure debate last Thursday in the Scottish parliament surrounding the financing of his constituency offices, was confidently expecting to escape with no more than having to offer a public act of contrition, given the built-in majority of the Labour-Liberal coalition. Various attempts to cover his tracks had forced him to admit to the media last Monday to being responsible for a ?muddle, not a fiddle?. The following day, at a private meeting with his Labour Party colleagues, McLeish allegedly ?appraised them of all the known facts? and gained their unequivocal support. The forthcoming debate would be hostile and uncomfortable, but the outcome was guaranteed.
So what forced McLeish to resign, rather than tough it out? In the end it was his own basic lack of principle and integrity, his opportunistic craven desire for power, which was, by his own admission in recent interviews given to commemorate his first year in office, driven by a lifetime of always being second best. Fife council workers, once loyal Labour Party supporters, had discovered yet another scam run by McLeish?s former Westminster election agent. It was not the scam itself that worried them: it was what they saw as even more evidence of the contemptible arrogance of the Labour Party in Scotland and their unabated abuse of power.
The election agent had used an office, paid for by the taxpayer, to run a charity for the elderly, funded partly by Fife Labour council. The council workers alerted Tommy Sheridan, who, after checking the information, tabled an amendment to the debate planned for Thursday.
When this new information filtered through on Tuesday afternoon, Labour Party members were astonished that here was still more incriminating evidence that McLeish had kept from them during his ?honest appraisal? earlier that day.
On Wednesday lunchtime, despite being aware of the developments but with head firmly in the sand, McLeish toured the members? restaurant, ? la Thatcher and in the evening dined at Holyrood Palace where he got the message that a national newspaper had been tipped off by the SSP. One assumes that it would be at around that point that he started to compose his resignation speech.
This latest example of the congenital failure by yet another ?representative of the people? to operate openly and honestly in the interests of the people, rather than themselves, is further proof, if it were needed, of the bankruptcy of career politicians and their complete disregard for the needs of those who, despite overwhelming evidence of graft and corrupt practices continue to put them into these lucrative positions of trust.
Ronnie Mejka