The Scottish Conservatives leader, Annabel Goldie has rushed to rearrange what deckchairs she has left.
The BBC reports;
John Lamont, who failed to win one of the Tories' UK election target seats, is handling justice issues.
Now John Lamont was one of 5 MSPs who chose to ignore the dual mandate issue and their parties and stand as a candidate for Westminster while already being an elected parliamentarian - I personally think this is wrong given the parties all signed up to cleaning up politics.
You can read about the cleaning up of politics including the actual clause (see this post).
The surprise of the reshuffle is the appointment of Gavin Brown MSP as political advisor to Annabel Goldie, now I have never met Gavin so went to his website to read a little about him.
His website is three years and 140 days out of date - it has not been updated since New Years day in 2007.
He claims he is standing for Edinburgh South - which is false, he also claims that the Conservatives are the main challengers in Edinburgh South, also false (it is in fact the Liberal Democrats who hold the Edinburgh South seat) and it was Fred Mackintosh and the Liberal Democrats who started second at the General Election and finished second with the Tories falling even further behind in a very distant third place.
It is hardly reassuring if he is now the political advisor to the leader, poor Annabel Goldie.
Anyway, here is the full Scottish Conservative line-up:
- Leader: Annabel Goldie
- Deputy leader and health: Murdo Fraser
- Justice: John Lamont
- Finance: Derek Brownlee
- Education: Liz Smith
- Rural affairs: John Scott
- Chief whip and campaign manager: David McLetchie
- Political adviser to the leader: Gavin Brown
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1 comment:
"Now John Lamont was one of 5 MSPs who chose to ignore the dual mandate issue and their parties and stand as a candidate for Westminster while already being an elected parliamentarian"
Is this a problem? I'd say it was less of an issue for a party opposed to devolution (oh wait... the Tories are decentralists now) than for say Alex Salmond or Margaret Curran, especially if they made it clear they would give up their Holyrood seat if they won. Most Scottish Tories are paper candidates anyway; no harm, no fowl. You should be barred from having two jobs, you shouldn't necessarily be barred from running for one post when you've another (it's common enough for councillors to run; we don't get all worked about about them having a 'daul mandate issue' because it's always understood they'll stop being a councillor if they win).
Out of interest, has Curran announced she's stepping down from Holyrood? I quite fancy another Glasgow East by-election.
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