Where’s the leadership Kezia; Secret internal Labour polling shows support for Scottish Labour has totally collapsed to 15% as the party prepares to abandon its Glasgow stronghold, ever heard the concept of stand and fight where you are Kezia?

Dear All

Scottish Labour is in trouble, deep trouble; their problem is that there are more than one problem to deal with on multiple levels.

2015 was bad for Labour, 2016 was equally bad for Labour and 2017 is looking like the Scottish Labour Party is facing being wiped out.

There are no Labour heartlands anymore; that’s gone, the goodwill of the people was used up on the back of the Labour brand.

So, how did Labour get to this position?

It selected people who didn’t want to serve the people at MP, MSP and Councillor Level. It allowed MP and MSP staffers to get ‘top up’ money as councillors; which effectively was ripping the utter piss out of the public.

As the public woke up, they got angry and decided that the Labour representatives needed to be dumped, to that end; they used the SNP as a protest vehicle. The situation was compounded by Kezia Dugdale’s misstep by saying she could vote for Scottish independence which made working class unionist Labour voters defect to the Tories as a safe haven to ‘save the union’.

Scottish Labour has many problems coming up in 2017, and is said to be preparing for a near wipe out in its heartlands at next year’s local elections.

Let’s get it right, this is all self inflicted, it is Labour’s leadership who put Scottish Labour in its current position, although I have left the Scottish Labour Party after being discriminated against by the Local Campaign Forum, I got an email from Labour talking about how they are looking for new leaders. Here is the email for you to read,

“Dear George

The Scottish Labour Party is launching a new development programme to invest in our next generation of talent and prepare them to become leaders in our communites and our movement.

This brand new training and mentoring programme will be delivered by some of our party's most talented individuals as well as leading figures in media, communications and the third sector.  Training will cover all aspects of politics and will help develop vital skills in leadership, media and communications, public speaking and community organising.

The programme will be delivered over one full weekend on Saturday 4th & Sunday 5th February 2017, with three subsequent training events over the course of the following 12 months.  As well as these intensive sessions, successful applicants will also be paired up with an experienced mentor to support their continued development.

The deadline for applications is 5pm on Friday 6th January.  Find out more about the programme and apply here now. 

In order to rebuild our party from the grassroots up, the Scottish Labour Party needs to invest in our members and train local leaders at every level in the party and in the trade union movement.  If you or anyone you know in your local party or trade union would benefit from this programme we want to hear from you.

Best wishes

Brian 

Brian Roy

Scottish General Secretary”

As an idea, this has some merit however…… what the content is and who will deliver this idea and how will ‘outcomes’ be judged immediately flags up to me, some people in Scottish Labour who hold leadership positions aren’t leaders and don’t exercise good judgement either.

Any proof? 

Someone in Scottish Labour has leaked to the press Labour's own internal polling.

The internal polling is said to reveal that the party has failed to recover from its dismal election performance at Westminster nor from disaster of Holyrood where it slid into third place.

That 2016 campaign was poor organised, started late, had no vision, weak on policy and no one was willing to come out for the Labour candidates. I have blogged on my experiences of how the Labour Pollok campaign ran and how it was lost even before it started. I thought the campaign was a shambles, and I wasn’t the only person who took part in that campaign who also thought that.

Here is a number which might shock you, 15%, this is the number of Scots who plan to vote Scottish Labour. A huge amount of support for Labour has simply abandoned the party and walked across to the Conservatives since 2015.

Scottish Labour thinks that they can achieve 15 per cent of the vote, the Tories 25 per cent and SNP sitting on 45 per cent.

A Labour source said:

"The internal polling also tells us there is no such thing as a core Labour vote anymore."

The question of what to do about Glasgow is floating about because the question of funding the Glasgow campaign is in the minds of Labour, they think the city is already lost. I have to say losing is painful but to lose to a bunch of idiots in the SNP is especially sore, I know Glasgow SNP, full of clowns and idiots of low calibre and talent.

Four decades of Labour rule in Glasgow appears to be over all by the shouting even before the polls are open.

Here is a comment by Labour Cllr Jonathan Findlay; I have blogged on him before:

“Rather than train Labour Party activists to be leaders, we need to encourage local community leaders to be Labour Party activists!”

There is so much in that statement, firstly Labour do need to train up activists to be leaders, he got that wrong, and secondly, there is no encouragement by elected officials to even encourage current members to be activists never mind ‘community leaders’.

The internal not so secret report was presented to Labour MSPs who were briefed at a meeting in Holyrood.

A source at the meeting said:

"Of those who voted Labour in last general election, around half won't do so again with most going to the Tories. The polling for the local government elections has us at only 15 per cent."

Labour insiders say that resources will "be put into areas where campaigning is being done on the ground".

In Glasgow, it appears that even the few who do come out are being led by people who haven’t a clue about campaigning. I was recently chatting to someone who wanted to have a discussion on campaigning, I said to her, if anyone says anything interesting let me know. To my surprise she said she wanted me to do a presentation, so I said it was a bit short notice and I hadn’t prepared anything and anyway who did she want me to chat to about campaigning anyway.

It was the closed group on Facebook, ‘The Scottish Labour Campaign Forum’, the group is basically a who’s who in Scottish Labour and I was asked to put forward ideas to get people thinking about campaigning. The Forum is stuffed with MSPs, Cllrs, Staffers and senior party people. In end, I didn’t do it, well let’s get real, I am standing for public office in 2017 in the Glasgow Pollok Ward, if they had selected they would have got my experience and vision for free. 

I am a great believer in letting people do exactly what they want to do, and then let them live with the consequences, the consequences of Scottish Labour treating me unfairly and discriminating against me was me walking off to stand as an independent candidate. As I said to my real friends, those in Labour who discriminated against me are not important, and who knows perhaps post 2017, they wouldn’t have a future.

One thing in Scottish Labour is a lack of loyalty and trust, this is seen by the observation of a Labour insider who pointed out that the Herald's access to Labour's own polling data was a problem.

The person said:

"The fact senior people hand this stuff to the media says it all about mess we are in”.

My comment that Scottish Labour doesn’t know what leadership actually is, is spot on, this person has deliberately undermined the Glasgow Labour Campaign in an attempt to hand over the city to the SNP. 

Here is another example of ignorance by the insider:

"However, STV may save the base. It's not ground zero. Any rebuilding job in Labour has to start at councils. But it's a 20 year thing."

20 years?

It doesn’t take 20 years to rebuild public trust, people and policies matter, get that right and have the right people as candidates and people will come back, continue to cheat them and it will be a damn sight more than 20 years to get a comeback.

Politics isn't difficult.

Tory chief whip John Lamont:

“Labour didn’t need internal polling to realise what has been obvious for months now, that Scots are tired of their flip-flopping on independence. When they can’t be trusted to stand up for the union it’s hard to trust Labour on anything else, so it’s no wonder they’re so unpopular."

To add to Labour’s woes, Steven ‘bin laden’ Purcell, the former leader of Glasgow City Council, said Scots party leader Kezia Dugdale's call for a new Act of Union was "a distracting and hollow sales pitch".

He added that in the face of the internal polling Ms Dugdale's "job right now is to stand up for the 62 per cent of Scots who voted to stay in the European Union".

Steven ‘bin laden’ Purcell is an idiot and comes across like an SNP stooge when he said:

"This means having the courage to work constructively with the Scottish Government to build the widest possible coalition to put pressure on Theresa May."

He then added:

“Labour can be relevant again, winning hearts and minds, if it re-embraces it's radical spirit of home rule.”

If Scottish Labour falls to the point of taking Steven ‘bin laden’ Purcell advice, they might as well shut down Scottish Labour entirely, he is like a mini Henry McLeish who is seen by some as another SNP stooge in Labour clothing.

Scottish Labour need to offer the people of Scotland a future, they need to reconnect with the working class and disconnect from their ‘pet’ minorities obsession and realise that the most discriminated group in Scottish society is white working class Scots!

Vote George Laird for Glasgow Pollok 2017 because I know I am the best candidate standing in that Ward!

Finally, Happy New Year 2017 when it comes, be safe, stay out of trouble and don’t drink and drive.

Yours sincerely

George Laird

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University