A New Chapter for Scottish Labour; Scottish Labour Party badly needs reform but leaked report says Scottish Labour 'in peril' under Leonard, Richard Leonard didn’t put the party in a hole, he is just the guy in it looking up, party need unity, party needs reform and party needs a cull of dead weight, 10 point plan to turn around Labour’s fortunes

Dear All

One thing seems pretty clear, the Scottish Labour Party is in a dire place, one single MP in Scotland, again, and relegated to third place in the Scottish Parliament behind the Scottish Conservatives. 20 years ago, Scottish Labour was the dominate force in Scotland; in fact the red wall was so strong in terms of vote share that malaise overtook the party. People found out the hard way that when they went to local Labour MP or MSP to fight for them, that the service was either so bad or non existent. I speak of this from experience personally and also from hearing others stories. With such huge voter numbers, to lose votes from people who were abandoned never seemed to be a problem for some MPs or MSPs, they had secured tenancy in the main, a good life and Scottish Labour had no mechanism to compel those elected who were lazy or indifferent to work. In fact, if you were to complain that the MP or MSP failed you as a constituent, you wouldn’t have a mechanism to receive your complaint at HQ. This is because regardless of your complaint, they would automatically take their MP or MSP’s side against you and close ranks.

When right this post today, I was reminded of something I wrote on twitter yesterday regarding the current leader Richard Leonard who the right wing of the Labour Party want to force out. They think wrongly that changing leader, in this case Richard Leonard will magically and installing a ‘Blairite’ will change the party and their fortunes. So here is the exchange from Ross Newton:

“For real through, Richard Leonard has to go. The undeniable truth is he's simply not up to the job. There will be no recovery for us under his "leadership" and the stakes are too high to leave him in post cause he's a nice enough guy. He should do the right thing and resign.”

My reply to this tweet was:

“Given the recent leaders prior to Richard Leonard were what some people call 'Blairities', a return to that won't help the party. How did Scottish Labour lose its voters, under the Blairites. Let’s remember recorded history of Scottish Labour's failures didn't start with Leonard.”

So, if they didn’t start with Richard Leonard, where is a good point in history to start to assess the decline? Where you start is important as it dictates how you explain how we end up here in relation to going forward. In handing out blame, the bulk of that blame rests with the right wing of the party. Of course the left don’t have a clear pair of hands either because either side is ‘remarkable’ at ignoring their own failures in terms of people and policies. 1999 saw the opening of the Scottish Parliament, the creation of 129 elected MSPs, complete with staffers and offices. If you add in the total numbers of MPs in Scotland, you get 188 elected people and multiple that by 5 staffers, you get 940 people. Scotland should have been awash with people solving complaints, 354 to 940, and this doesn’t take into account the elected councillors. Early on a huge bulk of that representation was Scottish Labour, so in theory, Labour had the means and opportunity to effectively caught the ‘complains market’. If they had captured that market it would have also translated in the vote share, a happy customer always sticks with you.

In the space of only 8 years something hugely detrimental must have taken place in the minds of the Scottish people concerning the party. The Westminster expenses scandal of the mid 2000’s was a flashpoint, although Westminster was in the maelstrom of the storm, a few people found themselves caught up in criminal trials, Labour MPs like Scottish Labour MP Jim Devine from Livingston took the trip to court and were found guilty. With sleaze on the minds of the people, the 2007 election ushered in minority SNP government, the SNP pitch was they were whiter than white.

This election of 2007 was a massive turning point because of what happened next, Scottish Labour beaten and kicked out of ministerial office spent the next four years being unhappy, sulking and unwilling to graft hard. This period probably more than any other since 2007 failed to address internal problems and yes that does include people who needed to be replaced. All the lack of effort since 2007 came to a head on election night 2011; this election saw an SNP majority government. Scottish Labour leaders came and went rapidly but it should be noted they weren’t renewing the party, they were just happy to steer it until, they either left for various reasons.

The bulk of these people leading the Scottish Labour Party were from the right wing, which some people commonly refer to as ‘Blairities’, Blairities encompasses ‘Brownities’, much in the same way as pepsi and coca cola are classed as coke. In 2015, Jim Murphy gets selected and leads Labour into the most disastrous Westminster election. His and Kezia Dugdales efforts sees Scottish Labour wiped out with only a single MP remaining. The SNP returned 56 MPs, Scottish Labour 1, Conservatives 1 and Lib Dems 1. Jim Murphy’s campaign was something I called out 3 months before the election in a blog post entitled, ‘fucking it all up’. To clarify what I meant, Scottish Labour launched their election campaign which early on dominated with two issues, one was the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act, and secondly, campaigning to restore, ‘getting a pint at a football game. When I saw this, my first thoughts where are these two things the most pressing injustices in Scotland?

http://glasgowunihumanrights.blogspot.com/2015/02/fucking-it-all-up-labour-leader-jim.html

Who in their right mind thought that Scots would rally round this unbelievable crap and vote for the party?

How you start a campaign is very important, that first step can either make or break you, failing to set the right tone means people turn off and don’t give you a hearing, even if down the line you produce better quality material. Jim Murphy’s campaign using football was dead, the minute he launched it. Next, he is replaced by Kezia Dugdale, although she meant well, her tenure could be summed up by a simple statement, in the major issues of the day; she was always on the wrong side of it. She wasn’t cut out to be leader, I spoke to her on the night of the EU referendum by chance, she came across as likeable, when she stepped down; it was probably the best thing for her to do.

The point of this rather long intro was to highlight what came before the current leader; Richard Leonard came from the right wing of the party. I voted for Richard Leonard but I also voted for Jackie Baillie because what Scottish Labour lacks is unity. Whether the left and the right like it or not, they must work together as a single unit, and they don’t really. Each wing of the party stays their own wee grouping as shown on campaigning photos at election time. Photos in some respect give you a snapshot of the health of the party, along with other information.

A leaked report says Scottish Labour 'in peril' under Leonard, this is the story of today, what that ‘peril’ is, escapes me, because laughingly it can only mean that the right wing via Our Scottish Future think tank have come to the conclusion that only a ‘Blairitie’ can fix the current problems. Richard Leonard sits in a hole dug by the right wing of the party, he didn’t the hole; he just finds himself sitting in it looking up. The presentation has been circulated to the party’s MSPs this highlights another problem of Scottish Labour, trust. Certain people in the party cannot be trusted, because if they could, this report wouldn’t have been leaked. As a party member, I take the view, don’t trust anyone’, I rarely socialise with them and never reveal my personal information to them because if you do, you run the risk of them ‘weaponising’ it.

The 2021 election isn’t looking good for Scottish Labour, and although Our Scottish Future punt what they call a “strategic overview” that warns that, after successive election losses, the “scarring could be permanent” for Scottish Labour, they aren’t producing rocket science. At the 2019 European election, Scottish Labour lost both its MEPS, and I left the party after being headhunted for the Brexit Party, I helped secure a win. In the December general election, I wasn’t able to campaign effectively due to health reasons, mainly going blind. Also, I was able to give my input into the party in the same way I could at the EU election. Scottish Labour lost six of its seven MPs, if you look at the results in terms of vote share from the EU election you would have thought alarms bells would have sounded for the party.

Apparently many of Richard Leonard’s colleagues want him out, but what does that achieve? If Leonard goes, is there a voting majority suddenly going to run back to Scottish Labour under presumably Anas Sarwar? Anas Sarwar isn’t standing for or calling for leadership challenge, he was Leonard to resign, he doesn’t want a bloodbath and I would think, he isn’t sure he would get enough votes to win a contest or win it by a huge majority. Recent polls, which show Mr Leonard remains unknown to most voters almost three years into his leadership, this is both his fault and Scottish HQ.

Something I blogged on previously mentioned by Our Scottish Future is that Labour’s preferred constitutional option of federalism has limited cut-through with the population or buy-in from either side of the debate. Federalism isn’t viable or sellable at an election, because there is a political war being fought in Scotland. Other issues flagged up which they call the “two big strategic prizes” at the Holyrood election would be overtaking the Tories to become the official opposition and depriving the pro-independence parties of a majority. At present, the Scottish Labour Party has failed to grasp something which I have highlighted for years; they aren’t in a fit state to campaign.

Finally, the solutions to Scottish Labour’s problems are many, key to which are;

1/ A new campaigning model

2/ An extensive teaching network for activists to learn new skills

3/ Mandatory media training courses for candidates and MP/MSPs held each year

4/ A dedicated mobile training team which visits and assesses CLP’s effectiveness

5/ Ending the use of paper candidates in seats

6/ Activism records held on every Cllr, MP, MSP and candidate, verified and submitted to HQ by a third party

7/ More emphasis on promoting long term policies, a narrative, showing that Scottish Labour are capable of being a government in waiting

8/ Re-vetting policy for existing elected officials and HQ staff based on their work

9/ Party re-unification in Scotland

10/ Limit term on the Regional list to two terms

This isn’t all, 20 years of decline cannot be fixed overnight but unless major reforms go ahead, third place at Holyrood looks like the long term de-facto slot for the party. The narrative of the SNP stole our clothes has to end as well, Scottish Labour need re-write their own narrative and no blame others for their failure. The current strategy seems in my mind to be wait until the voters fall out of love with the SNP’; aka get elected by default. I would also suggest limit term on the Regional list to two terms which should encourage list MSPs to campaign harder in constituencies.

Yours sincerely

George Laird

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University