By Hydra Heid, one of our two-faced correspondents

Johruth Lamovison - Conlab Leaderene and nominee for Galactic President

Speculation about a Conlab party split erupted in the Holyrood press lobby, when only one of the ConLab heads went off in a cream puff.

A spokesheid for the subservient Lab section of the party whined that the First Minister had "failed" to secure cross-party agreement on the composition of a panel looking at how recommendations from Lord Justice Leveson can be applied in Scots law.

In a last-ditch effort to pretend that the Lab section of the party retained something of its former separateness, they had suggested one of its former MSPs as a panel member.

On Thursday afternoon, subservient Labheid seized control of the common word processing finger and wrote to the First Minister expressing its concerns that there was a lack of collaboration with the appointment of the panel.

Mr Salmond responded with a letter in which he wrote: "Far from being informed of the panel's membership by press release, you in common with other party heids had advance notice of my decision."

The letter goes on to state that Mr Salmond had to "operate within constraints" to choose "a relatively small, focused panel with an appropriate diversity of professional and other backgrounds and, importantly, to strike an appropriate balance of expertise".

It was for this reason that the First Minister said he decided against the selection of another practising lawyer as this may have "unbalanced" the panel but instead, "opted for the candidate with the greatest experience in defamation".

Former Conlab MSP John Park responded, "Wow! Someone asking me my opinion? It was worth buggering off from Holyrood just for that. I have some sympathy for Labheid. The suggestion that anyone has more experience of defamation than a Conlab MSP is totally ridiculous. We did nothing else but defame folk."

No Labour MP was willing to comment, as none of them had actually heard of Holyrood.

The panel chosen will be chaired by Lord McCluskey, senator of the College of Justice and a former solicitor-general. He is joined by David Sinclair, director of communications at Victim Support Scotland and former president of the National Union of Journalists; Professor Neil Walker of the University of Edinburgh; Peter Watson of law firm Levy & McRae and visiting professor at the University of Strathclyde; and journalist Ruth Wishart.

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