MS Isobel Lindsay, the veteran campaigner for Scottish home rule and a
former leading light in the Scottish National Party, announced last
night that she is to join the Labour Party.
Five years after she let her SNP membership lapse, in protest at the
party's refusal to take part in the Scottish Constitutional Convention,
she is poised to jump the political fence.
Ms Lindsay, whose husband, Mr Tom McAlpine, is an SNP councillor in
Clydesdale District, said last night that she believed Labour
represented the most effective vehicle for delivering a Scottish
parliament.
''I came to the conclusion that a Labour government was the best hope
of progressing Scotland's interests. We cannot bypass Westminster.''
Ms Lindsay joined the SNP in 1967 and served in a number of senior
posts, including vice-president, before their political divorce in 1989.
She is convener of the Campaign for a Scottish Parliament, the
cross-political lobby group, and said she remained firmly committed to
that role.
Labour's Scottish hierarchy, which may have previously regarded Ms
Lindsay as something of a thorn in the party's side, is expected to view
her imminent membership as an important coup at a time when interest in
home rule has been reawakened by the Labour leadership contest and the
continued failings of the Tories -- both in Scotland, and at UK level.
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