Opinion

It looks as if this could be the end of the road for Wendy Alexander's leadership. A tragedy for her and a disaster for the Scottish Labour Party. But after the Sunday Herald's revelations today, it is difficult to see how she can continue in office. There are now glaring contradictions in her account of the illegal donations affair.

We were told last week that the Scottish Labour leader had not been made aware until lunchtime on Thursday of the illegal nature of the donation made by the tax exile Paul Green. But we now have evidence that her team had doubts about whether it was "permissible" as early as November 5.

The internal Labour document also suggests a potentially unethical attempt to conceal the identity of another prospective business donor, Moir Lockhead of First Group. It seems Labour had intended to tell the Electoral Commission that a donation listed in his name had come from the former Labour MP John Lyons, although ultimately Lockhead declined to donate to the campaign.

This takes Alexander into altogether more treacherous legal waters. For she now faces allegations of intent to deceive. Hitherto, it had been possible - just - to believe that Alexander had been a victim of the incompetence of her campaign staff. Like Gordon Brown, she could claim that the unlawful donations had come as a profound shock to her.

But that is no longer sustainable. Her team was clearly fully aware of what was being done in her name and could have prevented it going any further.

She may not fully have appreciated the significance of what was going on, but ignorance, in this matter, is no excuse. Alexander is the "regulated donee" and in law responsible for these misdemeanours even if she didn't inspire them.

It was, after all, her own government that created these rules on political donations. The law against proxy donations is a Labour law, as is the law against accepting cash from individuals not eligible to vote in UK elections. Of all people in the Scottish Labour establishment, Alexander should have been across this. She is supposed to be the most intelligent politician in the Scottish party with a brain the size of Dumbarton Rock.

But sometimes very intelligent people can do stupid things. It may be that she and her confederates believed that, since the leadership election for which they were soliciting donations had never happened, they didn't need to bother with obeying the rules. If so, it was a fatal miscalculation. The money didn't actually have to be spent for the law to be broken.

Defenders of Alexander will no doubt say that the sums involved were trivial and that the laws broken were not serious ones. That the nature of the offences does not warrant the ultimate penalty of resignation. I have some sympathy with this view myself. So do some members of rival parties, who are no doubt thinking "there but for the grace of God go I".

However, we didn't frame the laws, the Labour government did. A Labour leader simply cannot be seen to transgress them knowingly and with impunity.

Perhaps Alexander has some elaborate explanation to offer the public about the affair. If so, we would be the first to want to hear it. But in the absence of such a defence, her future looks bleak.

It could take months for the full implications of this story to be teased out. The police will no doubt have to be involved at some stage. Alexander has resigned from ministerial office once before, after Jack McConnell's "night of the Claymores" in 2001. The one thing we do know about her is that she is a quitter. But this could be her final departure.