Dear All
Polling can sometimes flag up new information or warnings, a
new poll is proving uncomfortable reading for Labour leader in Scotland , Richard Leonard, the news is that
Scottish Labour is on course to lose all the Westminster seats it gained from the SNP at
the last general election.
In Glasgow North East, I helped Labour MP Paul Sweeney get
over the line to royally defeat Nicola Sturgeon’s pal, Anne McLaughlin, it was
a close fight, but I knew that Paul Sweeney could win it.
242 votes majority was the final deciding factor on who went
to Westminster
on the night of the count. Lord Ashcroft had put Labour’s chances at 2% of
achieving a win so taking that seat was a special moment because a dedicated
few had battle the might of the SNP machine. The team was a mixture of
personalities and different campaigning styles but somehow it managed to work.
The Labour Party is going through a bad period; a survey
shows plummeting support for Jeremy Corbyn, it could be said that there
has been problems, the party split between the supporters of Corbyn and those
of ‘progress’ the right wing of the Labour Party. Progress is sitting biding
its time, what are they waiting for; well simply put ‘electoral failure’ by the
UK Labour leader.
In Scotland ,
polling says the SNP are sitting on 42 per cent, which according to the polling
this also means they would get back the eight seats it lost to the Scottish
Conservatives in June 2017, with the Tories polling at 24 per cent of the vote.
I helped three people become MPs in 2017, two Conservatives and one Labour
since at that point I wasn’t in a political party and was therefore a ‘free
agent’. I enjoyed working for both Labour in Glasgow North East and the
Conservatives in Ayr and Newton Mearns.
One of my best days campaigning was going around the wee
small villages in Ayrshire promoting Bill Grant, the Conservative, an ex
fireman.
Nice weather, nice people and the local Conservatives were pleased I had
travelled all the way from Glasgow
to pitch in for them. The worst part of my experience was campaigning for Pollok CLP,
treated like shit, ignored and made to feel unwelcome, assisting in a campaign
which was quite frankly a joke, run badly by people who didn’t achieve much
during the short campaign, 888 votes for 6 weeks work.
Prior to the six weeks
the Pollok CLP was doing nothing for months on end.
Recently, I was asked to put my thoughts together about
Pollok CLP for someone, so I scribbled down what I thought should be the
objective of the CLP if there was to be a snap election or election in 2022.
The feedback was the person agreed with me because I highlighted several issues
beyond the current ‘race row’ Westminster
selection contest.
Professor Sir John Curtice who is always worth listening too
said the results suggested Labour’s support “is going backwards”, well that
about sums things up, on the wider scale,
it mirrors what I highlighted about what needed to be addressed at Pollok CLP…….
leadership.
The Labour Party in Scotland isn’t doing much, there
isn’t a person driving forward an agenda, it seems everything is haphazard and
too short term to have any lasting and meaningful impact.
If you had read my back blog posts, you will notice that I
was saying that the SNP could hold on as the largest party, but even with support
from the Scottish Greens, they might not make a majority. What the poll says
that the SNP is on course to to get an unprecedented fourth consecutive Holyrood
election win. This is why I keep going on about why the 2021 Holyrood is the
most important election since Holyrood opened in 1999.
What that election is about is denying the SNP an overall
majority even with Scottish Greens support!
At present the Scottish Labour Party is the third party in
Holyrood, so there is a huge amount of work to do to get even a sniff at the
Office of First Minister but the handicap is who is going to do the ground work
in the communities to go out and get the votes. And also when you see some of
the people in charge, you ask yourself who is going to go out and work for
them.
Which is why the vast majority of the membership have spoken
with total inactivity, being a member and being an activist is two entirely
different things, in the eyes of the Labour Party there appears to be no
difference.
Jeremy Corbyn’s popularity among voters seems to have
slumped a bit, with just 28 per cent of Scots now feeling favourably towards
him. Here is a clear example of why the slump happened:
How do you think this sits with potential voters?
Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard is struggling to make
a name for himself; he is polling with just nine per cent of people viewing him
favourably, and the headache of 26 per cent viewing him unfavourably. Not the
polling a person wants to see if they have ambition to be First Minister.
Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson on the other
hand is the most popular politician among voters at present, that is good news
for the Scottish Conservatives, however, the Conservatives need to have a
better ground operation to compete with the SNP, plus they need a ‘unique
message’ to sell basically something which they can get Westminster to do that
the SNP cannot. Scottish Conservatives need to give Scots something which would
get them mass support.
Labour campaigns spokesman Neil Findlay said:
“The emerging dividing line in Scotland is between Labour’s plan
to invest and build an economy that works for the many, not the few, or further
austerity with the SNP and the Tories.”
Does anyone at the Labour HQ realise that parroting ‘for the
many, not the few’ tagged into every spokesperson responses is just plain
annoying, and makes them sound like a mindless drone.
A Conservative spokesman said:
“This very much reinforces Labour’s position as political
non-entities in Scotland ,
and proves Ruth Davidson is the only alternative first minister to Nicola Sturgeon.”
Finally, although
all political parties look at the polling religiously, they are always on the
look out for trends, if the future polling continues to look bad for Scottish
Labour, they will by circumstance be forced to change not just policies, but
also practices and people, candidates and staff. I said yesterday that Labour
could get back five seats in Glasgow, I still stand by that observation however
they will have to be creative and work for them, politics in Scotland is still rather
fluid.
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for
Human Rights at Glasgow
University
Labour need to wake up if they stand any chance. If Scotland turns to the Tories to get rid of the SNP, so be it. Not ideal, but hey. Labour have some nice carrots to offer under Corbyn, but it's unfortunately not good enough.
ReplyDeleteDear Anon
ReplyDeleteI think you might be a bit hard here but there is a lot of fake democracy I grant you that.
George
Dear George,
ReplyDeleteI am being too hard on the Tories but i would like to see the back of Treason May and mince pie eating Ruth. I disliked Thatcher but in this day we really need another leader like her.
Dear George,
ReplyDeleteWhat do you make of this illegal and sinister scheme by the Snats to groom children as young as 8 years old on Twitter?
https://twitter.com/ScotGovEurope/status/1017809717551357955
Hi Mike S
ReplyDeleteSurely the government should be writing to parents first?
George