05 November 2005

Tory meltdown (or at least crumbling a little at the edges)

The Scotsman reports on a minor Tory scandal:
"BRIAN Monteith resigned last night from the Conservative group at Holyrood, pre-empting his certain expulsion by party chiefs after he admitted secretly plotting a campaign to remove David McLetchie from the Tory leadership. Mr Monteith quit after learning that details of emails he had sent to Iain Martin, the editor of Scotland on Sunday, in which he referred to Mr McLetchie as "the Letch" and suggested that they campaign for his removal, were about to be published. "

This is the same Mr Monteith who featured in yesterday's Evening News:
"In a newspaper column yesterday, Mr Monteith said Mr McLetchie was guilty of complacency, but not greed, over the taxi affair, adding: "Tories owe David McLetchie a debt of gratitude for halting their inexorable decline, turning the party around and making progress on the way to recovery."

Apart from the hypocrisy, the surprising aspect of the affair is that Mr Monteith trusted journalists with e-mails displaying his disloyalty. A subtle effective plotter? Or a little lacking in the Guy Fawkes department?

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