Spiders, bugs and worms are bad enough but now I’ll have to face Labour
Dugdale set for party showdown
Kezia Dugdale has admitted that she expects to be disciplined by Labour after her controversial appearance on I’m A Celebrity.
Dugdale will return home from the Australian jungle after tonight’s final of the reality TV show and is due back at Holyrood on Wednesday afternoon. The former Scottish Labour leader failed to tell the party that she was going on the programme.
And the leaked news of her appearance totally overshadowed the election of the party’s new leader, Richard Leonard, last month.
One senior f igure close to Leonard yesterday renewed calls for her to be suspended.
And in a newspaper interview, Dugdale said: “I understand the anger, the frustrations. I understand that I’m going to have to have a lot of hard and very honest conversations.”
She revealed I’m A Celebrity producers prevented news from home from getting into the jungle camp so she had no idea whether she had been suspended.
She said: “I worried daily ly about that.”
But Dugdale insisted that at she wanted to continue as an MSP and stand at the next xt Holyrood election in 2021.
She added: “I want to stay tay as a member of the Scottish ish Parliament – I genuinely love ove what I do. I love the local side of it, the constituency side of it, the campaigning aspects of it.
“In many ways, I much preferred erred my job as an MSP before I became came leader because I got to do more of that.” She also said she wantedd to “speak about UK issues and haveave a UK platform”.
Dugdale wi l l donate three hree weeks of her MSP’s salaryy and some of her f ive- f iguree TV appearance fee to charity.
Stephen Low, a member of Scottish ottish Labour’s governing executive, urged theth party to discipline her over missingm three weeks’ work as an MSP. He said: “If Labour MSPs aren’t going to hold one of their own to account forfo breaking the rules, they won’t be ini much of a position to hold others tot account. “If the Scottish Parliamentary Labour Party are prepared to swallow ‘ it was for charity’ as an excuse, then, much like Kezia, they’ll give the impression they’ll swallow anything.”
Dugda le has admi t ted her appearance fee is “in no sense small” but has so far refused to say how much or what percentage is going to charity.
Her spokesman said: “Kez knows her decision upset some of her Labour colleagues. The nature of her contract meant that she could not discuss her reasons for appearing on the show with them in advance.
“She will hold private talks with Labour colleagues on her return to parliament in a few days.”
Dugdale quit as Scottish Labour leader in August, saying it was time to “pass on the baton” to someone else with “fresh energy, drive and a new mandate”.
Leonard became Scottish Labour’s fourth leader in just three years after defeating rival Anas Sarwar.