In a column earlier this year, she revealed that the Queen had done a joke impression of fiery Ulster Loyalist politician Ian Paisley during a visit to Edinburgh city chambers. That she should try to use the Omagh bombing for party political purposes genuinely saddens me. And to try to draw a comparison between the Omagh bombers and the democratic civic nationalism of the SNP is obscene. She should resign. Susan Dalgety, the depute leader of the City of Edinburgh Council, provoked calls for her resignation with an extraordinary attack on the SNP in a newspaper column.
Innocent children die.
Of course Alex Salmond is not an evil terrorist. And the ordinary members of his separatist party are not murdering thugs hell-bent on bombing their way to a free Scotland. But nationalism corrupts and as the blood-drenched history of Ireland proves, it can lead all too easily to the death of a nation and its people. Embarrassed Labour officials at the party's Keir Hardie House headquarters were swift to disown the comments. They ordered her to withdraw her remarks and issued a terse apology under her name.