TWO Scottish Labour candidates poked fun at party leader Kezia Dugdale after she forgot the names of some of her colleagues.
Michael McMahon and his daughter Siobhan made sarcastic comments on a Facebook forum after their leader’s gaffe, but the messages were later deleted.
A party source told this newspaper: “Candidates should be disciplined during a campaign.”
Dugdale was judged to have made a solid start to the Holyrood campaign through her performances in two televised debates.
However, the momentum ebbed away after she was accused of dumping a policy on income tax rebates, as well as getting into a tangle over whether or not she would ever back independence.
She also got tongue tied last week in a BBC interview. Pressed to name the people standing in Banffshire and Buchan Coast, Perthshire North and Uddingston and Bellshill, she said: “We’ve... er... Uddingston, I can’t quite remember. I don’t have the list in front of me right now but they are all in place, I can guarantee that.”
McMahon, who is the Labour candidate in the North Lanarkshire seat and is also standing on the regional list, has been an MSP for 17 years, since the Parliament was created.
In comments to the Motherwell Times newspaper, he played down the gaffe: “I didn’t hear the show and I really don’t care. Labour has 73 constituency candidates so if at that moment Kezia forgot I am the one for Uddingston and Bellshill then it doesn’t bother me.
“The fact the SNP think it is a story is truly pathetic and are just trying to deflect away from what is happening within their own house locally.”
However, he used a different form of words on a Facebook forum for Labour members.
He posted an unflattering article in the Daily Mail on the BBC interview and wrote: “Apparently someone called Kezia Dugdale doesn’t know who I am. Should I be worried?”
Siobhan McMahon, who was elected to Holyrood in 2011 and is standing again as a list candidate in Central Scotland, also entered the fray.
Ms McMahon is said to have been irked by Dugdale’s comments last year about the party needing “fresh talent”, remarks that did not reflect well on sitting MSPs like her.
She responded to her father’s comment by writing. “To be fair you’re not fresh talent so that probably explains the memory loss” - a statement followed by a winking emoticon.
Mr McMahon said his comment had been a joke but that someone from the “party hierarchy” had asked him to take down the post.
He is believed to have an outside chance of holding his constituency seat, but he and his daughter are so far down Labour’s regional list that this path to Holyrood is blocked.
A Scottish Labour spokesperson said: “We are proud of every candidate in this election making the argument to use the powers of the Scottish Parliament to stop cuts to schools and local services.”
A source close to Ms McMahon said she had been poking fun at her father’s age.
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