Brother, can you spare £27,000?

As well as reporting on the possible defection of a Labour MP, the Sunday Herald also has an article on a £27,000 loan to the SSP by the Party's former deputy Treasurer, Gordon Morgan. Morgan wants the money back in full, and is taking the Party to court to get it.

Morgan apparently started the action when he discovered that the SSP had sold their HQ again to keep themselves afloat. Oh, and did I mention that he has defected to Solidarity?

This is the latest (and perhaps most destructive) skirmish between the parties: Solidarity leaders Tommy Sheridan and Rosemary Byrne withdrew from an agreement to pool the cost of hiring researchers; a Solidarity activist has called on the SSP to disband; the SSP have called on the Standards Commissioner to investigate whether or not Sheridan should have declared a stay in a hotel paid for by a tabloid newspaper. This one, however, is the big one, and could damage the SSP heavily, leaving them with little or no resources to fight the campaign. The SSP simply say that they are 'prepared', claiming that, 'Solidarity think they can ruin us but it won't happen'.

I would say that Solidarity are about to win the battle for the Scottish Left, but I suspect that with the vitriol that's going into this row, there will be no winners, only a lot of disenchanted voters who threw their lot in with the SSP in 2003, but either won't bother voting or will support someone else entirely this time around. And they will be the biggest losers in this affair.