LABOUR’S JUNGLE WARFARE
Dugdale risks suspension as MSPs carry out own ‘trial’
KEZIA Dugdale was not given permission by her party to take part in I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, it e merged yesterday.
New Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard said the party did not approve her decision to take three weeks off work to join the show in the Australian jungle.
She had asked the party’s business manager for permission – but it was refused.
Labour MSPs are expected to meet today to decide whether their former leader should be suspended from the party following a public backlash against her decision to appear on the ITV show during the Scottish parliament term.
The Scottish Daily Mail understands that some will attempt to persuade others in the group that Miss Dugdale’s decision is so ill-judged that she should be suspended and forced to become an independent MSP.
She is expected to make her debut on the show within the next 36 hours and was due to
‘Cockroaches and crickets’
arrive at Brisbane airport late last night.
She will be joining Stanley Johnson, 77, who has made a series of gaffes worthy of his Foreign Secretary son Boris during his short spell in camp
The former politician and author made his first uncomfortable remark when he was introduced to footballer Jamie Vardy’s wife Rebekah during Sunday night’s launch show.
After she explained to him that she was ‘the wife of Jamie Vardy, who plays for England’, he asked her if he was heading to The Ashes this week, after presuming he was a cricketer.
Meanwhile, viewers have already been treated to the first of the stomach-churning Bushtucker Trials.
Made In Chelsea’s Georgia Toffolo – known as Toff – and boxer Amir Khan were voted for by the public to take part in the ‘ Critter- Cal Rescue’ challenge.
Khan grappled with maggots, snakes and cockroaches as he searched for keys, while Miss Toffolo, 23, was heard screaming ‘they’re in my knickers’ after being locked in a chamber filled with cockroaches and crickets.
Ahead of today’s first group meeting since he became Labour leader, Mr Leonard yesterday spoke of his ‘personal disappointment’ about his predecessor’s decision.
He said: ‘There are issues, not just the fact that she is there and the kind of programme it is and people’s view of that, there is also a question about whether she got permission to do it.’
Pressed on whether she had been given the party’s backing to take part in the show, he stated: ‘My understanding is she sought permission and wasn’t given permission.’
Later, Mr Leonard said that she had asked him if she could take three weeks off to do work for charity that was ‘close to her heart’, but had made no mention of it being to appear on I’m a Celebrity.
He said he would not have