Bye Bye Wendy, Wendy Bye Bye

Another day, another disaster for Gordon Brown - surely he must be wondering which God he has pissed off in a previous life. Scottish Labour leader Wendy Alexander has resigned following Holyrood's Standards Committee's decision to suspend her from the Scottish Parliament for one day. A Labour leadership contest is Christmas come early for the SNP, especially since there's no obvious candidate to replace Wendy. In a situation similar to Rhodri in Cardiff Wendy has attracted so much media attention that the people underneath her are relatively unknown. Alex Salmond will be delighted to be the only recognisable face left!

It has to be asked though, WHY has Wendy resigned? I don't get it. She's been mired in financial "scandals" for a year now - you'll remember her dodgy offshore donation just before Hain bit the bullet and the failures to disclose donations occurred at the same time. She should have resigned then, as Hain (eventually) did. But she didn't, she clung on. So why is she resigning now? A one day suspension is a very tame punishment (specially seeing as how it was handed down by what Wendy insists is a party political motivated committee), and Wendy seems sure that Parliament won't approve it - so why the resignation?

Firstly there's the fact that Parliament probably will approve it. Both the SNP and Lib Dem members of the committee voted for the suspension and you'd expect both parties to do so in a full vote as well. But the fact still remains that it's only a one day suspension.

Has she just had enough? It must have hurt like hell when her party (outside Holyrood) hung her out to dry on the referendum issue - has she decided to sod them all and quit?

Has there been pressure on her to quit? Without Wendy, Labour will find it easier to vote against the SNP's single question referendum bill. With her they would have struggled to vote against it after she so loudly called on the SNP to "bring it on".

One thing is for sure, not many political leaders have had Wendy's opportunity to choose which scandal she'll use as her reason for resigning!

Note: The Miserable Old Fart asks the same question