Labour employs psychiatrist to beat Salmond

And most observers of the hurly-burly that is Question Time in the Scottish Parliament would agree that First Minister Alex Salmond tends to emerge victorious over his main adversary, Wendy Alexander.

But Labour MSPs believe a psychiatrist's analysis of the performance of their own leader and fellow members, against the First Minister, will allow them to land more verbal punches on the SNP leader.

The expert has offered Labour his views on the strengths and weaknesses of Mr Salmond, to help Ms Alexander gain the upper-hand during debates.

He has revealed him to be a combative personality who revels in the din of heckles, but is intimidated by the strong, silent treatment.

The psychiatrist told Labour MSPs that, like an errant schoolboy left to stew in his own ignorance, Mr Salmond should no longer be assaulted with insults by his opponents but should instead be left in silence to answer questions in the hope that this will reveal a failure to grasp crucial details.

The battle of minds during recent Question Times has been repeatedly won by the First Minister, but the Labour Party believes its new psychological evaluation has provided it with crucial insights into their opponent's Achilles' heel.

The psychiatrist, who has not been named, identified particular Labour MSPs as enablers whose behaviour actually assisted the SNP leader.

Amongst the biggest culprits are Lord George Foulkes, Duncan McNeil and Andy Kerr. The psychiatrist observed that every time they made "an intervention from a sedentary position" it gave the First Minister an easy get-out from actually answering the question.

"What we were told was that Mr Salmond was obviously coming in with pre-prepared attacks on those three MSPs," a senior Labour MSP told The Scotsman.

"Every time they started giving him a hard time, Salmond simply went on the attack against one of them and was able to avoid answering the question. It was also observed when there was silence, Salmond had to actually concentrate on the question and struggled to answer.

"The heckling plays to his strengths because of his time in Westminster, but his real weakness is that he has no real grasp of detail, so when he is not given the opportunity of attacking somebody else, he's in trouble."

The MSP added: "It has provided a fascinating insight for us into what we do and made us all sit back and take a look at ourselves. In the heat of battle, you don't always realise that what you do might actually be helping the other side rather than hindering them."

The Scotsman understands that the psychiatrist was already carrying out observations of First Minister's Questions out of professional interest and then offered his services to help out Labour leader Wendy Alexander.

The help was used as part of efforts to improve Ms Alexander's performance in the Scottish Parliament, especially after a series of poor performances during First Minister's Questions.

The difficulty Labour has been trying to overcome is Mr Salmond not answering questions Ms Alexander puts to him, and for her to expose this as a weakness. They have often complained that he uses Question Time as a means of insulting his opponents.

The psychiatrist said that a quiet chamber also enhanced Ms Alexander's one noticeable strength over Mr Salmond, which is her grasp of detail. If the advice is followed, the new-found silence on the Labour benches will be a relief for Presiding Officer Alex Fergusson who has been under pressure to stop MSPs from drowning out debate.

But the bad news for Mr Fergusson is that there are no plans to give other SNP ministers the same silent treatment.

Labour have officially denied that they have taken on a psychiatrist.

Alexander did break rules over donations

WENDY Alexander was found yesterday to have broken parliamentary rules by not declaring donations to her leadership campaign.

The judgment on the Scottish Labour leader was passed down by the Holyrood standards committee, which has been investigating donations to her successful leadership campaign last summer.

But the committee was split on what action to take against Ms Alexander. Some members said she should not be punished in any way, but others disagreed.

The cross-party committee will meet again today to decide what to do. It could suspend her, censure her or let her off without punishment. It is understood all three options are still on the table.

Suspension is unlikely but, if it were to happen, it could spell the end of Ms Alexander's leadership of the Scottish Labour Party.

The committee is looking into eight donations to Ms Alexander's leadership fund.

She did not declare these donations as gifts, but that was after taking advice from clerks to the standards committee. She insists she acted in good faith.

The controversy flared up only when Jim Dyer, the Standards Commissioner, overruled the clerks and decided that Ms Alexander should have declared the donations after all.