Douglas Fraser: "Some send their poison by post. Others post it online"
Wendy Alexander, Scottish Labour's embattled leader, has suffered another blow after it emerged a top aide is to quit.
Although Labour officials were last night stressing Tony McElroy had been planning his departure for a while, the timing could hardly be worse for the party's leader.
He will be the third spin doctor to leave since Ms Alexander became leader less than five months ago, and news of his departure comes as the Electoral Commission prepares to announce whether they are calling in the police over the illegal donation to Ms Alexander's leadership campaign.
Mr McElroy, who has been Scottish Labour's head of communications for the past four-and-a-half years, is leaving to take up a public affairs post with the supermarket giant Tesco.
His departure follows that of Brian Lironi, who resigned as Labour's chief spin doctor at Holyrood after Ms Alexander became leader last September.
Matthew Marr was also forced to resign as Ms Alexander's spokesman in November after shouting an obscenity at First Minister Alex Salmond during The Herald Politician of the Year awards ceremony. One senior Labour source last night predicted that other disgruntled party workers are set to resign.
The commission is meeting tomorrow and is expected to announce the outcome of its two-month investigation into the illegal donation the follow-ing day.
Ms Alexander has admitted accepting the £950 cheque from Jersey-based businessman Paul Green, despite the fact non-UK residents are banned from making political donations.
Dr Jim Dyer, the Scottish Parliament's Standards Commissioner, has already called in the procurator-fiscal over Ms Alexander's failure to register donations to her campaign fund.
Her defence is that she had sought and followed guidance from parliamentary authorities in November that she did not have to declare the money.
When asked yesterday if she was considering resigning in light of the new developments, Ms Alexander said: "I don't think anybody's future should be called into question on the basis of following the advice of parliamentary authorities."
But yesterday a parliament spokeswoman said: "While we cannot comment on any individual case which may or may not be under investigation, we have no reason to believe that any member has been provided with erroneous advice from officials."
Dr Dyer issued a statement yesterday insisting he had no option but to refer Ms Alexander's case to the procurator- fiscal once he believed the rules had been broken.
He said: "I am not a final arbiter of what should be counted as a registrable interest - that is, in the end, a matter for the parliament and in some cases the courts."
A former deputy leader of the SNP also waded into the row by claiming Dr Dyer owed Ms Alexander an apology.
Jim Sillars said: "If I had been in Wendy Alexander's shoes this weekend, I would have sought judicial review of the administrative process and actions taken by the office, and person, of the Standards Commissioner in relation to this decision to make a referral to the procurator-fiscal."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article