Jock Thamson-Bairn offers his observations on the Scottish Labour leadership contest
NOMINATIONS closed this week for contenders for the leadership of the Labour Party Branch Office in North Britain. Labour, as always, were coy about numbers but it is ‘widely believed’ – and that’s a phrase you don’t often associate with Labour – that there are two candidates.
It has yet to be confirmed that one of those two, Ken Macintosh, only joined the party to gain access to the Labour Party Social Club. The other candidate, Ms Kezia Dugdale, has made a name for herself with her performances at First Minister’s Questions.
That name, however, is one I refuse to use as my mother always told me not to mock the afflicted.
Their first speeches as candidates were surprisingly similar. Perhaps London Labour couldn’t be bothered composing two different ones.
After a rigorous selection procedure, which I believed consisted of producing your passport to prove you weren’t Jackie Baillie, both candidates got down to the task of replacing Jim Murphy.
Now there should be nothing easier on the face of this earth than to be either more popular or more effective than Jim Murphy. However, I’m sure that, in keeping with the traditions set by Labour in Scotland, both will contrive to fail at both hurdles. It’s what they do.
Their first speeches as candidates were surprisingly similar. Perhaps London Labour couldn’t be bothered composing two different ones. All I know is both opened up with the same phrase: “Are you sure Murphy has definitely gone?”, “Has anyone checked under the seats?”
Once it was established that the Irn Bru crate at the back of the hall was vacant, both candidates proceeded to regurgitate most of what Murphy had been spouting for months.
Both tried to rally their comrades with stirring speeches stating their intention to “shake things up”, which leads me to think that their election slogan for Holyrood next year could well be “Vote Labour – We’re Shaken, Not Stirred”.
Labour’s identity can be summed up thus: in England they mostly agree with the Tories even when they do their worst, and in Scotland they disagree with the SNP even when they do their best.
I suspect, however, that, as usual, their campaign will consist of “Vote Labour – We’re Not The SNP”. And that gets to the heart of what is wrong with Labour: devoid of any real ideas or principles; their UK identity can be summed up thus: in England they mostly agree with the Tories even when they do their worst, and in Scotland they disagree with the SNP even when they do their best.
To be fair to Ms Dugdale, she had another pitch to appeal to her electorate, and believe me I almost wish I was making this up. She feels she is “best placed” to restore Labour’s fortunes because she is “young”. That’s it.
No admission of her part in the loss of credibility of her party in Scotland, but a commitment to keep repeating the same mistakes in the future and presenting them in a better light.
It’s the London Labour way. If the electorate reject you it must be because your PR people let you down. Get new PR people.
And once again the falsehood that it haemorrhaged members in Scotland because it stood with the Tories in the Better Together campaign was trotted out. This is an attempt to portray Labour politicians as martyrs, that their belief that the UK should stay together for the good of all had cost them their political lives.
Nonsense. Many of those who abandoned Labour could have lived with the fact that it campaigned for a No vote. What turned most away is the tactics that Labour used to get that result. They lied to us. They smeared others. They used dirty tactics and false information.
The fact that so many who voted No in the referendum went on to abandon Labour in the General Election is proof of that. When it dawned on folk that Labour was, as many had warned during the referendum, advocating a No vote because it was better for Labour and not better for the UK, the party was doomed.
It’s the London Labour way. If the electorate reject you it must be because your PR people let you down. Get new PR people.
Standing with the Tories didn’t kill Labour, standing for its own self interest did. And yet, despite the lesson given to the party by the Scottish electorate, Labour continues to treat us like fools.
It is still trotting out the nonsense that its office in Scotland could be separate in any way from its main office in London. What it is in fact saying to a very savvy Scottish public is: “We will make different false promises in Scotland from the false promises we make in rUK.”
Perhaps one day in the future, Scottish Labour will be allowed to write its own false promises. It has become like Greyfriars Bobby sitting beside the party’s grave refusing to believe it’s dead. How on earth can it be so out of touch?
Well, like many of the deluded, it has an enabler and in this case it is BBC Scotland. I only saw the last part of BBC Scotland’s probe into the demise of Labour, but all the ingredients were there. BBC Scotland does have some serious political journalists but it chose Jackie Bird to present this programme and that set the tone.
Ms Bird reads the news. In all the years she has been on our screens the only thing I know about her is that she likes sunny weather because she hilariously berates the weatherman as if it’s his fault when it rains. Every sodden night the same sodden joke.
Ms Bird was chosen for this PR exercise for Labour because she wouldn’t ask difficult or probing questions. They needed someone who could go through a whole programme without stating the bleeding obvious. Step forward Jackie.
And that ladies and gentlemen is what the BBC has become. The Scottish branch of the once proud and mighty Labour Party; a party founded in Scotland and steeped in Scottish socialist values is almost dead in this country and the BBC’s investigative documentary into this momentous event could have passed for an advert for a mail order catalogue.
Jock Thamson-Bairn
Picture courtesy of Alex Black