23 October 2005

Shooting the messenger?

Politics can be a nasty business, as this report from The Sunday Times illustrates:
"LABOUR MSPs have warned that they will vote to ditch Kathleen Marshall, the children’s commissioner, after she criticised the Scottish executive over the deportation of a family of failed asylum seekers, writes Marc Horne...
McConnell has since demanded a new Home Office “protocol” to make the removal of failed asylum seekers less traumatic.
The first minister is said to be angry at Marshall’s intervention in an issue over which Holyrood has no control. Backbenchers have also expressed frustration that she has criticised the executive over this issue while failing to support it on measures such as education and antisocial behaviour.
Her reappointment will be decided by the parliament’s cross-party corporate body and Labour MSPs have threatened to withhold support. “She’s getting a nice salary and a nice position yet she thinks it’s her job to take the executive to task over things that are not its responsibility,” said a source close to McConnell. "

Some of us think, however, that Ms Marshall was entirely justified in seeking to highlight this issue. And it is a bit late for Scottish Ministers to claim that this is not a matter for which they have any responsibility, given the earlier pontifications of Messrs McConnell and Chisholm.

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