ALISTAIR Darling found himself in a sticky situation yesterday when a protester lunged at him with a carrot cake.
The transport and Scottish secretary was about to give a speech at the launch of a new group supporting the expansion of Heathrow airport when awoman opposing the development intervened.
John Stewart, chairman of the Heathrow anti-noise group Hacan ClearSkies, claimed it was "one in the eye" for Mr Darling.
According to anti-expansion supporters protesting outside the event at the CBI headquarters in London, the woman shouted: "Alistair Darling's presence at the launch of this pressure group stinks."
Mr Stewart, who was among the campaigners protesting outside the event, added: "It is quite inappropriate that any secretary of state should so publicly align himself with any pressure group.
"It really calls into question his impartiality and his judgment."
The new group launched yesterday was called Future Heathrow and is headed by Lord Soley.
Opponents of the expansion plans argue that the importance of attracting more passengers to the west London airport has been over-emphasised.
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