Dundee City East Labour candidate Mohammed Asif seems to be unable to follow his leader Iain Gray’s call to get Labour’s core vote out to protect Scotland (and in this case Dundee East) from the Tories. This week has seen him send a letter to every postal voter in the constituency asking them to vote for him. Nothing wrong with that you may think until it is revealed that the letters went to Dundee City East’s current SNP MSP, Minister for Public Health and Sport Shona Robison and SNP City Council leader Ken Guild. Clearly if he can persuade Ken and Shona to ditch their lifelong commitment to the SNP and vote for him, he is a shoo in.
In that case he would surely have no need to engage in a poster blanketing war that has seen a rash of posters go up all over the east of the city, including (allegedly) in flats he owns, without the tenants' permission.
Either way we wish Mr Asif well on his journey to "palriament" [sic: ref Dundee Courier political diary 23/04/11] .
In that case he would surely have no need to engage in a poster blanketing war that has seen a rash of posters go up all over the east of the city, including (allegedly) in flats he owns, without the tenants' permission.
Either way we wish Mr Asif well on his journey to "palriament" [sic: ref Dundee Courier political diary 23/04/11] .
Also in Dundee City East ex-SNP councillor Allan Petrie is standing for the Lib Dems. Mr Petrie we understand has had a dalliance with almost every political party, having also campaigned for Labour MP Iain Luke in 2005. He also at one point wrote a number of letters to the Press purporting to represent his own political party I-Vote.
Of course there is nothing wrong with having political opinions that mature as time goes on but if Mr Petrie’s get any more mature he might find his list of political o
ptions getting very short indeed (only the Tories left). Be that as it may Mr P now wants the people of Dundee City East to vote for him with his current Liberal Democrat hat on. That got me to thinking about his marathon political journey, so I had a look at his Lib Dem biog online. Amusingly it reads:
“I became an SNP councillor in 1999 but resigned my membership due to the constant attacks from the leadership on hard working members of the party and SNP shifting away from being a membership-led organisation.”
Of course what Mr Petrie does not say is that he actually left the SNP when he was de-selected as a councillor. The more unkind among us may say that Mr P left because his political options in the SNP were over.
Nevertheless we wish Mr Petrie well in his current billet and sincerely hope that he never has cause to be the subject of attack from the leadership there, if he, unlike the rest of us, can figure out who is actually in charge at Lib Dems Scotland HQ: Tavish or Nick!
Pictured above: Mr Asif is on the extreme left (signing the table) in front of Labour's MP for Dundee West Jim McGovern and next to Labour's Dundee City West hopeful West End Councillor Richard McCready. Also above is Allan Petrie on a sunny Dundee day!
