More John Reid
Jamie reminds us that John Reid had an unfortunate incident with this expenses, and then some.A few months before his Ulster posting, he was the first senior cabinet member ever to be severely censured by the parliamentary commissioner for standards, Elizabeth Filkin.
I mentioned below that Reid had a bad Bosnian war. The Mail on Sunday in 2003 noted:
Reid forged an unlikely friendship with Karadzic's chief lieutenant. 'John got on very well with Biljana Plavsic, Karadzic's deputy. John affectionately used to refer to her as "Billy-Anna". On the face of it, she was quite a nice old lady, but she's just confessed to crimes against humanity in the war crimes court.'
Brendan Simms, who I believe is a member of the H'S'JS, said: 'John Reid seemed very keen to stress the moral equivalence of the two sides but we now know this was a war of ethnic cleansing by the Serbs.'
A leadership campaign would inevitably mean these incidents (and presumably there are more) from Reid's career would be scrutinised much more closely, and I don't really see how he could survive.
Update: There's a little bit more detail here. I think it's a genuinely worrying prospect he is being considered, but as I said above I think there's too much (terrible) history there.
posted by Matthew @ 9/30/2006 06:43:00 PM
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