Murphy expects: Ritual disembowelment?

Just a short and grubby blog today. With the news that Jim Murphy intends to enter the Scottish Labour leadership fray comes the intelligence that, according to the Guardian:

"Some senior colleagues believe that a Labour MSP who plans to retire in May 2016 from a safe Labour seat could be persuaded to stand down earlier and allow a byelection to take place on the same day as the general election in 2015."

Other newscasters are also reporting that Murphy himself seems to have raised the idea of a 2015 by-election in a Holyrood constituency in launching his campaign. The expection, presumably, that one of his more lumpen and loyal colleagues will helpfully commit political harakiri, sweeping the lugubrious Jim to Scottish office and allowing him to put questions to Nicola Sturgeon every Thursday going into the 2016 election. 

All I can say is: good luck with that one, Jim. Under Schedule 2 of the Scottish Parliamentary Pensions Act 2009, MSPs demitting office are entitled to substantial resettlement grants if they serve as sitting MSPs at parliament's dissolution but are not returned by the grateful electoral. And here's the nasty snag. If you demit office before your term as MSP is through, you forgo this payment. You "resettle" yourself through resignation, and must fend for yourself financially. Bill Walker won't have got a penny. 

And we're not talking about small beans, here. The rate of an MSP's grant is at least half their salary - and more if they've put in long service, where the formula is their years of service in the parliament divided by twelve and multiplied by 100 (up to a maximum of twelve years in hock). To pluck one example entirely at random, take Ken MacIntosh.

First elected in 1999, MacIntosh will have sat in Holyrood for 17 years by the end of the parliament's 2016 term. If the Eastwood MSP prostrated himself on Murphy's altar, and took one for the team, he'd be forgoing 100% of his annual MSP's salary in a generous payoff - about, what? - £58.000? Even the meanest Labour numpty, despatched to the Scottish Parliament accidentally in 2011, is entitled at least £29,000 - but only if they go into the 2016 Holyrood election still in office. What a wizard scheme. What noble sacrifice. 

So the question is this. Which Labour MSP is daft or loyal enough to let Jim Murphy pick their pocket of several thousand pounds for an early by-election?

Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his resettlement grant for his leader, as they say...