The SNP has moved quickly to capitalise on Labour being sued by own of its own stalwarts in its central belt heartlands.
Nationalists will Thursday formally demand a statement on the sacking of veteran Labour councillor Tommy Morgan as North Lanarkshire Council's internal watchdog.
Mr Morgan has announced that he is seeking a judicial review of his dismissal as convener of audit and governance in the local authority.
The stalwart was ousted before Christmas in a knife-edge vote which split North Lanarkshire's ruling Labour Group.
Mr Morgan's supporters say he was dumped because he was investigating controversial moves to renegotiate a deal between the council and Mears Scotland, a firm run by a friend of Labour's North Lanarkshire leader, Jim McCabe.
Mr McCabe's colleagues deny this, saying the sacking came after Mr Morgan used aggressive industrial language in an internal row over schools closures.
The opposition SNP - which has had its own splits in the council over recent years - was quick to capitalise on the legal action.
Its group leader, David Stocks, said: "The press reports that Mr Morgan had written to the council chief executive querying the £30 million a year Mears contract, which has been re-negotiated to the detriment of the Council and where the Council Leader is close to senior officials at Mears.
"This affair stinks. It is time for Labour to tell the public and other councillors what is going on. After all, we are dealing with a key financial watchdog committee."
The SNP has long lobbied for Mr Morgan's former post to be held by one of its own councillors, rather than a Labour one. The party says such watchdogs are opposition in all but three of Scotland's 32 councils.
Richard Lyle, the SNP MSP for Central Scotland and a Mr Stock's predecessor, called on Labour's Scottish leader, Jim Murphy, to look at Mr Morgan's case.
He said: "There is no place for this kind of behaviour in Scottish politics - those who speak out against alleged foul play should not face adverse consequences."
Two former SNP councillors - now independents - will call for Mr Morgan's re-instatement on Thursday, when North Lanarkshire holds a full council meeting. Labour - as is customary from bodies being sued - made no comment.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article