Cllr John Letford, a Labour councillor on Dundee Council has quit the Party to sit as an Independent, after claiming the Leader of the Labour Group Cllr Kevin Keenan offered him an OBE if he agreed to stand down early as Lord Provost.
The allegation is denied but the motive would have been to have sustained a minority Labour administration in Dundee after they lost a byelection to the SNP. The SNP are now set to take control of the Council at the next meeting. Cllr Keenan says: "People are jeering at the Lord Provost as his car passes." Charming.
In his speech to the Scottish Labour Conference on March 6, Gordon Brown included a joke about Dundee which was hosting the event. "As you know I'm not long back from Washington DC and I said the people there that I couldn't stay long because I was off to Dundee, They asked, Dundee Michigan, Dundee Illinois or Dundee Oregon? I said the original Dundee. They asked what state was it in? It's in a great state, I replied. It's got a Labour council."