RAISED eyebrows among Nat readers of Prospect Magazine this week, which ran an interview with the SNP's Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh.

Despite her party's left-leaning rhetoric, the Ochil MP said many of its policies would "traditionally be thought of as centre or centre right".

Centre right?! Good grief. Don't tell the new membership.

Perhaps Ms Sheikh was overcome with nostalgia for the good old days, when she was the Tory candidate in Govan.

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SCOTTISH Labour members must know their way around Edinburgh's Apex International Hotel, where the party's leadership hustings were held this week, pretty well by now. It was only a few short months ago that Jim Murphy (remember him?) Neil Findlay and Sarah Boyack sought to sell their candidacy to the party faithful at the same venue.

But for MSP Richard Baker, who is now vying to become deputy, the Apex is becoming almost a second home.

"There's nowhere that makes me think more of teamwork..." he said. "My wedding reception was in this hotel - it was in fact in this very room. My wife Claire (the Labour MSP for mid-Scotland and Fife) for will tell you that however daunting the challenge may seem with teamwork you can overcome it."

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IAIN Gray, Scottish Labour's stand-in leader, declared that he was "famous for levity" at FMQs this week.

He then revealed that he had considered grilling Nicola Sturgeon over the campaign to save the Greggs macaroni pie, but decided against as he "would never get four bites out of that!" Cue groans across the chamber.

The FM's spokesman though had a rather better gag up his sleeve at the regular press briefing held after the session.

"I thought Iain Gray was going to start talking about how he preferred Subway" he cracked, a reference to the famous incident during the 2011 Holyrood campaign when Mr Gray, then Labour candidate for First Minister, took refuge in a sandwich shop in a doomed bid to escape an ambush from serial protestor Sean Clerkin.

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THE Scotland Office's lecture series is on its third Scottish Secretary, and has featured a former Canadian Prime Minister and the head of the British Museum. But it took a change of Scottish Secretary from Lib Dem to Tory before it finally got its first female speaker on Monday night, in Ruth Davidson.

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THERE was the rarest of sights at Holyrood this week - a rebellion among MSPs.

Labour frontbencher Jenny Marra, party public health spokesman Richard Simpson, along with backbenchers Anne McTaggart and Malcolm Chisholm, voted for an SNP amendment to the Scottish Government's Air Weapons and Licensing Bill on Thursday. The rest of the Labour bloc opposed it.

So what was behind the split? A crisis of conscience perhaps? A rejection of partisan politics? An honest difference of opinion?

Don't be silly - according to party sources the Labour group was merely confused about what exactly they were voting for.

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Unspun will return on September 8, after the Holyrood recess.