Cheer up Jack McConnell, you're in the Lords

Published on Tuesday 29 June 2010 02:14

A DECADE ago as a minister, Jack McConnell declared that he wanted to open up Scotland's "elitist" quangos to ordinary people rather than the great and the good.

• Former First Minister Jack McConnell listens to the Queen's writ confirming his investiture as a life peer in the House of Lords

So there must have been something quite satisfying for the Motherwell and Wishaw MSP to be invested in the biggest quango in the land – the wholly appointed House of Lords.

Red faced and sweltering in the heat, the soon to be noble Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale of the Isle Arran in Ayrshire and Arran, yesterday entered the House of Lords to hear the Queen's writ confirming his investiture.

He was perhaps pleased to hear from the clerk that as a peer he was now entitled to "privileges and immunities".

Whether that made the Upper Chamber any less elitist was a matter of some debate.

But, celebrating his humble origins, his new title was adopted from the sheep farm he grew up on as a boy which made it all the more appropriate that the doleful looking Lord Howe – once famously described in the Commons as a "dead sheep" – was sitting nearby observing events.

Unusually for a new peer, Lord McConnell was initially reluctant for his official picture to be distributed to the press.

With his wife Bridget and grown-up children there to see the occasion maybe he wanted to keep it as a family moment.

But could it be, some whispered, that Lord McConnell was actually thinking back to the last time he was photographed in strange garb?

That Tartan Week picture of him posing in a pinstripe kilt in New York back in 2004 provided devolved Scotland with its biggest cringe yet and has haunted the poor MSP for Motherwell and Wishaw ever since.

In the end he relented, but as he strode out behind a man dressed as a coat of arms to be introduced in the Upper House, it was clear that the, at that point Mr McConnell esquire, could hardly wait to get out of his red robe and fake ermine.

He looked a lot less comfortable than the new Liberal Democrat peer Floella Benjamin, the former presenter of children's TV programme Playschool, whose presence did lead to some speculation about what shaped window the new inductees would appear from.

There was no shortage of opponents grumbling that he should not be there at all.

Within a few hours of his investiture the SNP were asking how Mr McConnell could remain an MSP and serve in the House of Lords? Central Scotland MSP Christina McKelvie said it went against the spirit of the Kelly recommendations on Standards in Public Life which call for the phasing out of dual mandates by 2011.

"Jack McConnell's constituents in Motherwell and Wishaw don't know if their MSP is coming or going," she said. She seemed to have forgotten, a Labour source noted, that until a few short weeks ago her party leader, Alex Salmond somehow managed to be an MP for Banff and Buchan, MSP for Gordon and First Minister.

And Mr McConnell is not the only Lord-cum-MSP. His friend Lord George Foulkes, MSP for the Lothians, was caught on the Heathrow Express and missed the two minute ceremony.

Speaking before he took his seat, Mr McConnell said he was looking forward to life in the Lords, adding: "Glenscorrodale is a special place for me. My roots are there and it was there that I formed my values and developed my interests and passions.

"I will respect this honour and the House of Lords but it will not change me or the causes I care most about."