David Maddox: The Tale of Mr Toad and the Dark Lady

Momentarily dragging this blog from the streets of Glasgow North East back to Holyrood, an interesting controversy happened this week which was quite instructive about the culture and lack of culture in the corridors of the Scottish Parliament.
On Wednesday evening in a debate on the Glasgow Airport Rail Link, the SNP list MSP Professor Chris Harvie described Baroness Shriti Vadera, one of Gordon Brown closest advisers, as "the dark lady of the London underground."
Almost inevitably there was a ripple of shock. Did he really just describe an Asian political figure as "dark"?
Within hours a press release had been turned out in Margaret Curran's name (remember her? She lost the Glasgow East by-election last year) demanding that the Professor apologise because his words "could be construed as racist."
Certainly one or two seasoned observers believe he would not have been able to get away with such language in the Westminster parliament.
Having said that everybody who knows him knows that Prof Harvie is not racist, but simply eccentric. The professor, nicknamed Mr Toad (which he celebrates on his website), has landed himself in trouble before by criticising the town of Lockerbie, attacking Neds dress sense and even describing Hitler as a genius and Blue Peter as evil. Most of us, though, believe he adds much needed colour and thoughtfulness to Holyrood's usually dull, robotic proceedings.
However, the response to Labour's attack from the SNP took everyone by surprise.
A party spokesman said: "This sort of innuendo is unworthy of Margaret Curran. Professor Harvie's remarks were a play on Shakespeare's 'dark lady of the sonnets' – which obviously has nothing to do with race – and Baroness Vadera's role in undermining the London Underground."
Leaving aside that many of us thought that Nationalists were only allowed by party leaders to quote Burns and not the English bard, the link between Shakespeare's sonnets and GARL was not immediately obvious and did not entirely appear to exonerate Prof Harvie.
The dark lady is a married woman who betrays her husband in an affair and represents lust, moreover, she is described as having dark hair and dun coloured skin. But essentially the literary point that Prof Harvie was clearly trying to make was that the dark lady leads the man into bad ways, which I guess is why he believes the Baroness has done for Gordon Brown on the underground.
Nevertheless, several of us wondered if the SNP press office had simply Googled dark lady and noted the third option as being the literary figure. So one of my fellow newspaper hacks went to confront the Professor in his office.
He found a completely unapologetic Professor Harvie who snorted: "Don't Labour read Shakespeare any more!"
Which certainly seemed to be a damning indictment on the quality and education of Labour MSPs these days.
This was ruined, though, by his researcher, who as my fellow journalist was turning to leave noted: "I thought he meant the dark lady of the Sith from Star Wars."