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

The Scottish Industry of Fake Educational Equality, ‘ring-fencing’ is the new language of the social oppressor, meaningless forum report highlights no time table to introduce new ‘help’ for disadvantaged working class kids, they don’t want ‘special treatment’, they want a level playing field, why won’t Nicola Sturgeon give them that, Sturgeon said ‘judge me on education’, it is time all of Scotland did just that!

Dear All

Years ago, when I was looking at education and who sits where, I found out that colleges in Scotland had people from universities senior management sitting on the college boards. At the same time, I was looking at the Scottish Funding Council in terms of who gets what in cash terms. The biggest bulk of cash coming from the Scottish Government goes to what are known as the ‘ancient’ universities, places like Glasgow, St Andrews and Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee. At the bottom end of the financial scale in terms of cash were the colleges, in recent years there has been a restructure of the college sector with ‘mergers’. The upshot of mergers once you cut through the glam and hype of how wonderful everything is because it is new was tens of thousands of college places lost.

Consider this, the bulk of college places go to working class kids, but you must also mention, foreign students use this as a gateway to university, along with middle class kids who didn’t get the grades! Higher education or university education is operated on a class system, yes, there are many working class kids in it, but their numbers are dwarfed by the middle classes from private schools. In subjects like medicine, veterinary medicine and dentistry, you will generally have to look very hard to find the students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Having spent 20 years at Glasgow University, I saw first hand the make up of the student population which changed little from a working class perspective. There were ‘changes’ but it was noticeable when it was done when the University was targeting foreign students. In the mid 80’s when I arrived, there was a healthy Norwegian contingent because of Oil and engineering, later years a huge influx of Chinese students.

In Court minutes as far back as 20 years go, the University of Glasgow decided to increase their intake of students from foreign backgrounds. Why the interest in teaching foreign students, basically money, universities were raking in cash to the tune of £25k a year from them. In recent years, as people noticed that EU students were getting free tuition, people clicked that this largesse worked against working class kids.

But this would be yet again, a symptom, of a problem never addressed.

The greatest lie of free tuition is that it is free, the bulk of the population which is working class over the years is paying for it and effectively frozen out of it. The current exams fiasco of downgrading working class kids to mere ‘second class citizens’ isn’t new. It is just a different style of discrimination on a massive scale, and it is just getting an airing because what the SNP have done under Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney. Their actions were so heinous that even their own SNP supporters and the press are up in arms. Today, the spotlight is focused on the SQA, but what has happened here is a symptom; a real part of the illness is the SFC, the Scottish Funding Council. This organisation should be split into two separate bodies, one for universities and the other for colleges, but it won’t.  You see politicians like to talk about how much they are spending on education, which is billions, but not who they spend it on.

A brief glimpse of the make up of Holyrood MSPs you can see most of the them have a degree from university, and a cosy relationship with them, they have no interest of changing the status quo to give disadvantaged kids a level playing field. When they talk about letting more working class kids in, the narrative they use is ‘lowering the bar’, basically saying the working class kids are ‘thick’, and the press and politicians, they generally don’t say anything in protest.

Working class kids don’t need the bar lowered for them; they need the same help that rich kids get. Pre covid, you take a walk into the Mitchell library and you could see kids from private schools getting extra help with paid tutors, pretty much every day.

Where was the level playing field which politicians were suppose to provide?

Have you ever considered the concept that the State school system isn’t there to provide educational opportunities beyond a certain point?

You are living in a world of passive discrimination which is socially acceptable to the political classes. Politicians keep saying they are trying to fix these issues, but they never tackle the people who do discriminate, have you never noticed that? Name one person dismissed from a university appointment for discrimination. I suspect you can’t name one, never read it in a paper, never saw it one a news programme because the university protects them, and in turn for covering up, they protect themselves, the politicians ignore it unless it is a ‘cause celeb’ to boost their election chances to either get into office or stay in office.   

Today, while we are still in the maelstrom of the SQA fight, something caught my eye, and it should get you thinking as well, establishments are being asked to ring-fence degree places for college students to help open up fresh opportunities for a university education to thousands of the Scotland's most disadvantaged in the post-Covid economy. When you look at who is offering this apparent ‘help’, you really need to ask, three questions, who, why and when. A new report released today in a college and university collaboration apparently sets out a series of recommendations to create more opportunities for students to progress seamlessly between a Higher National (HN) qualification into a university degree.

It should be pointed out that this already exists; it is not unknown that people who have taken an HND at college would enter university either at second or third year depending on their course or assessment of their ability. As to who came up with reinventing the wheel, is it produced by the National Articulation Forum; who are made up by people from Colleges Scotland and Universities Scotland. If you are the curious type, look up who funds Universities Scotland, then who runs this organisation; then check their linkedin background to see where they came from.

Universities Scotland is a mouthpiece organisation for universities!

When I read their proposals of what is effectively re-organising the deckchairs, I have to ask where these alleged extra thousands of the Scotland's most disadvantaged kids are going to pop up from. This measure looks rather to me to be a housekeeping measure to help clear out those already in the system earlier and make them look good because if the grades fiasco doesn’t pan out, then they have already got their ‘story; ready about helping, especially when they start rejecting people. If you take what these people say as gospel for a minute, they are really admitting that under the current system, thousands of working class kids who are disadvantaged where further disadvantaged by them regardless of grades.

How many decades have they known the system is broken; and if they only spotted this now in 2020, what does that say about the current state of management in education? How can people have faith in a system, which people on the outside know is flawed but those on the inside choose to do nothing of note to fix it. A real gem which you should look at is Higher education establishments are being asked to give a guarantee of places for college students on undergraduate and graduate apprenticeship degrees. I don’t like ‘ring-fencing’ when it comes to people, because when you stick in quotas based on things like social class, you just condoning the discrimination of the past, and green lighting the discrimination of the future. Of course, many will be taken in by the rhetoric, extra places for thousands of disadvantaged kids, but truth is, given the system was setup to fail poor kids, how much faith can we have in the same people who failed us all before and the politicians who failed to act unless pressurised?

Are we to simply believe they have had an epiphany?  

Also, another cracker to hone in on is that the forum say they have not included timescales for change "as the expectation" is for colleges, universities, the Scottish Government and other organisations "to progress them as a matter of importance".

This is the admission in my opinion of ‘no change’, because there is no commitment, no will, no ambition and no urgency to change the status quo.

Having seen the SNP Government of 13 years fail the poorest in society from the get go, given we have seen a lack of action for decades and decades, who is kidding who about anyone attaching importance to this? The reason that universities and colleges are squealing like they have got their ‘tits in a wringer’ is that foreign student numbers are expected to fall sharply as liken to ‘off a cliff’ due to covid. This creates a funding black hole, if covid hadn’t happened, universities were able to pad out the university population with £25k foreign students; this wouldn’t even be talked up as a starter beyond previous middle class rhetoric of ‘we are trying to help the poor’.

Lydia Rohmer, joint convener of the National Articulation Forum and principal of West Highland College UHI said:

“Colleges and universities have been working in partnership for many years to provide opportunities and pathways to enable students to make the transition from college to university. The work of the Forum has been invaluable in helping to provide focus on ways that colleges and universities can enhance that provision and provide more opportunities for students to progress towards their chosen careers. Articulation routes provide a valuable pathway from college into university for many students, some of whom will have already overcome significant barriers; therefore, it is important that the routes are flexible, seamless, and provide equality of opportunity.

The recommendations encourage even closer working relationships between colleges and universities – and indeed collective leadership across the wider Scottish education system – to deliver fair, equitable and sustainable pathways into university, and reducing any unnecessary repetition of the learner journey.”

That being said, we know the numbers of students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds still stinks, especially in places like St Andrews. In January figures showed that 15.9 per cent of the intake in Scottish higher education came from the most deprived 20 per cent of the population, amounting to 5,210 students.

Ask yourself, how many universities and colleges are there in Scotland?

Then grasp this, Scottish Funding Council funds 19 universities and 26 colleges, you could take the 5,210 students and they would make up one fifth of the total student population of the University of Glasgow.

To show how un-ambitious Nicola Sturgeon and her SNP Government is; they want to increase the number of disadvantaged working class kids by a measly 0.1%. From 15.9% to 16%, are you underwhelmed by this ambition? How does this stack up against the SNP lie that they are Stronger for Scotland? How does this stack up with Nicola Sturgeon saying, ‘judge me on education’?

There is a whole sub industry in university education that appears devoted to widening access, they get resources but in reality, they are just the public face of a talking shop that isn’t credible in my opinion.

And never where!

All they do is ‘talk, talk, talk’ but in the main, they are just educational social engineering tokenists. Their existence is to get you to believe that you shouldn’t complain, you shouldn’t ask questions and shouldn’t look further into this because these people are the education professionals. They might have a two room office somewhere but it is low staffed and stuck away somewhere in a university cupboard, maybe next to the coffee machine and someone’s spotted owl collection. Occasionally, they might get to go out to a school and do a presentation, unfurl some banners, do a power point presentation and tell kids how wonderful their university experience will be.    

A Scottish Government spokesperson said:

“Every child growing up in Scotland, regardless of their background, should have an equal chance of attending university and participating in higher education”.

Talk, talk, talk, too much talk and not enough action!

Yours sincerely

George Laird

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University