Ex-Labour leader’s TV stint in jungle ‘demeans politics’ says fellow MSP
FORMER SCOTTISH Labour leader Kezia Dugdale’s decision to appear on I’m A Celebrity... Get Me
Out Of Here! is “utterly ludicrous”, a fellow MSP has said.
Neil Findlay said her decision to head to Australia to take part in the reality TV show demeans politics.
Her successor as Scottish Labour leader, former Pocklington School pupil Richard Leonard, has confirmed the party’s MSPs are to consider whether to suspend her for going to the jungle. However, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has said she should not be suspended and that it is her choice.
Mr Findlay, a regional MSP for Lothian, said: “We have a situation where we’re in the run-up to the budget in Scotland, where local government is on its knees, where the NHS is showing pressures like never before, when people’s living standards are falling and they expect their MPs, MSPs, councillors, elected representatives to be in fighting on their behalf and I don’t think people would expect them to jet off around the world and sit around the camp fire eating a kangaroo’s appendage.”
Ms Dugdale will join celebrities including boxer Amir Khan and Boris Johnson’s father Stanley in the ITV show, which began last night. Left-winger Mr Leonard, who has became the fourth person to become party leader in the last three years after defeating rival Anas Sarwar, said suspension was not his initial reaction, but added: “I think it’s something the group will have to consider.”
His election was welcomed by Beverley Labour spokesman and former Mayor of Pocklington, George McManus, who said: ‘It’s great that a Yorkshireman and Old Pocklingtonian is now leading Labour’s Scottish revival.”