Bloggergate - heading for the courts?

On the trivial front, there appears to be an idiot out there who is so staggeringly politically illiterate that he thinks he can "out" me as, er, Lord George "Zebedee on acid" Foulkes MSP.

More seriously, an interesting tale in the Sunday Times:

"Nationalist blogger to sue SNP over 'unfair sacking'

Jason Allardyce

A former aide to Michael Russell, the education minister, is to take legal action against the Scottish National party, claiming he was unfairly sacked for writing a blog with rude comments about political rivals.

Mark MacLachlan also claims to have recorded the computer identities of everyone who logged onto his Universality of Cheese website, which could be revealed at an industrial tribunal.

MacLachlan says he was forced to resign as Russell’s constituency office manager after he was exposed as the creator of the satirical website that included gossip about the private lives of opposition politicians.

Among his targets were Lord Foulkes, the Labour MSP, Paul McBride QC, the Conservative lawyer, and Colin Smyth, general secretary of the Scottish Labour Party.

The SNP leadership immediately distanced itself from the site, with Russell claiming he knew nothing of MacLachlan’s blogging. A similar scandal involving Damian McBride, Gordon Brown’s former spin doctor, was hugely damaging to the prime minister.

MacLachlan said it was common knowledge among senior nationalists that he was the blogger behind the website, known within nationalist circles as “Cheese”. He insists he did not resign, as the SNP has claimed, but was effectively sacked, with a resignation letter drafted in his name by Kevin Pringle, the first minister’s most senior adviser.

At the time, a spokesman for Russell said he was “shocked” to learn that MacLachlan, who wrote under the pseudonym Montague Burton, had been responsible for what the minister termed “despicable anonymous commentary”.

Writing in today’s Sunday Times, MacLachlan denies he was involved in a smear campaign and insists that he had acted alone.

“The big question I’ve been asked repeatedly is: ‘Did Michael Russell know about your blog?’ I haven’t answered the question; that’s for Michael Russell to do,” he said.

“Personally, the saddest aspect of this sorry mess is the deterioration of my friendship with the man I regarded as my mentor.”

He added: “[Russell] commented last week to the local press that, although I did a lot of good work in Dumfries, he feels a victim and that I am some sort of Jekyll and Hyde character. This strikes me as taking the knife and twisting it in a little deeper.”

McLachlan said there were plenty of people within the SNP “both locally and nationally” who knew he was the author of the website and who had supplied him with material.

“I realise that in order to preserve themselves they had to put the boot in,” he said. “However, an IT-minded friend thankfully installed an ISP tracker on my blog about six months ago, and I now have access to the ISPs of the thousands of people who read my blog — people from all walks of Scottish life. Some were even daft enough to post Holyrood gossip from their work machines.”

John Park, Scottish Labour’s campaigns spokesman, described McLachlan’s remarks as “explosive”, adding: “It is very worrying that this goes right to the heart of the SNP. Michael Russell has to be very clear on what he did and didn’t know. Things have been said that have cast doubt on the integrity of a lot of people but we have yet to hear an apology from Mike Russell, Alex Salmond or anyone at a senior level of the SNP.

“We need to restore the public’s faith in politics. The SNP have to be very clear on what they expect from people who support them and be very clear on what role they have had developing these sites before they were in government and since they have been in government.”

Park said that MacLachlan’s comments underlined the need for the SNP to publish all of the emails and correspondence between its ministers, special advisers and the sacked aide. A spokesman for Russell said: “Mr MacLachlan resigned from his position as a constituency worker in the Dumfries office.

“It is difficult to understand how he could believe he could ever have remained in post, given his unacceptable conduct. Michael Russell, who employed him in his capacity as an MSP, was shocked to be told about the matter, knew absolutely nothing about it, and accepted Mr MacLachlan’s resignation.”"

It appears we have the sacked MacLachlan threatening to expose in court which other SNP members knew exactly who was behind his blog, and - as the argument will doubtless be - gave it their implicit approval.

Will the list include party office-bearers, MSPs or even ministers?

The world wonders.

(Furthermore, MacLachlan offers some interesting insight into the exact manner of his "outing".)