Former first minister heads for Malawi amid rift with Brown
By Paul Hutcheon Scottish Political Editor

JACK McConnell is understood to be angry with prime minister Gordon Brown after the peerage he was promised has so far failed to materialise.

Friends of the former first minister say Brown has reneged on a deal to allow his Labour colleague to sit in the House of Lords.

McConnell is also known to be so unimpressed with the state of his party that he is not planning to attend the Scottish Labour conference this month.

The rift has emerged in the wake of McConnell's resignation as Labour's Holyrood leader last August, following the SNP victory at the Scottish parliament election.

Brown had wanted McConnell to quit immediately after Labour's defeat in May, but the Motherwell and Wishaw MSP held on for three months as a way of securing guarantees about his future.

Discussions between McConnell, Brown and former Scotland secretary Douglas Alexander ended with an agreement that the MSP would resign as Labour leader and then become a peer.

McConnell was also given the job of British high commissioner to Malawi, a post he could take up in 2009.

However, despite McConnell's resignation, the promised place in the House of Lords appears to be no closer to being announced.

A friend of the former first minister said McConnell is unhappy about Brown's side of the deal not being met.

He said: "It is extraordinary that Jack hasn't heard about the peerage he was promised last summer. Former first ministers should automatically be offered positions in the upper house, if only to give the House of Lords the benefit of their experience in constitutional matters."

The friend added that there was suspicion the delay could be explained by the "animosity" Brown feels towards McConnell.

The former first minister is also understood to believe that the Labour party at a UK level has negatively influenced the Scottish party's position on a number of devolved areas, including the Commonwealth games.

He is said to be "unhappy" about the direction of Scottish Labour and will not attend the party conference in Aviemore later this month.

He will instead be working in Malawi on projects to help the ailing African country.

The row marks a new low in relations between Brown and McConnell, who were enemies from when McConnell took over as general secretary of Scottish Labour in the 1990s.

The pair were said to have improved their relationship when McConnell became first minister, but tensions re-emerged during the Holyrood election when Brown continually tried to upstage his colleague. The pair had a row after polling day when Brown reportedly told McConnell that Labour MSPs should vote for either a Liberal Democrat or a Tory as first minister in order to stop Alex Salmond from entering government.

A SNP spokesman said: "An unseemly situation such as this tends to confirm the discredited nature of the peerage system."

A Scottish Labour spokesman said: "This is speculation. Peerages are a matter for the government."