Sometimes a news story makes you think. This story in The Herald about the MacTerminator is a good example, not because of what was said in a six-year-old e-mail but for what it reveals about the shadowy life of a special adviser, rising and falling with the fortunes of his political masters.
Here is a man who was the head of strategy and special adviser to Henry McLeish when the latter was First Minister in 2001. Prior to that period, he had been a special adviser to Harriet Harman in the Department of Social Security. After Mr McLeish's downfall, he finds himself in 2002 working as a consultant on a short-term assignment for the Scottish Arts Council.
I have yet to establish what he was up to in 2003 and 2004, but in 2005 he hits the political jackpot and becomes Tony Blair's Director of Political Operations, where in due course he gets mixed up in the cash for honours affair, before being despatched north of the border to assist Labour with last May's general election. And now, once again, he pops up as special adviser to Des Browne at the Ministry of Defence (and/or the Scotland Office?).
What an extraordinary career. I wonder if he has kept a diary?
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