Speaking of Lack of Integrity; Lord George Robertson shows himself up as a fool by joining the calls of Blairities, he says Scottish Leader Richard Leonard needs to show 'decency and honour' and quit as Scottish Labour leader, but strangely he doesn’t name a replacement, so much to say, none of it relevant, Scotland doesn’t want Blairism back, Scots want the ethos of John Smith, something entirely alien to Blairities

Dear All

It’s Friday and to round the week out, here is a laugh, former Defence Secretary and General Secretary of NATO, Lord George Robertson has said, and with a straight face as well that Richard Leonard needs to act “in all decency and honour” and resign as Scottish Labour leader. You have to sit there a minute and let that all wash over you to soak in, if Robertson was coming the angle of any sort of abuse while in public office, then his point would be valid. The trouble is that Richard Leonard hasn’t done anything wrong of that nature to warrant calls to resign. He took over a failed party which was driven into the ground by the sheer neglect and disinterest of those who are Blairities.

And what is former Defence Secretary and General Secretary of NATO, Lord George Robertson?

He is a Blairitie, he is one of four Labour peers who have broke cover to call for Richard Leonard to go, none of what is going on surprises me, it is a re-run of the campaign used against Jeremy Corbyn. The drip drip effect of dissenting voices, what we should remember is that people like Robertson and co have had their day; they have moved on, they are no part of the Scottish Labour project.

They are outsiders!

When I am right this defence of Richard Leonard, I should point out, I am not of the left and neither am I an ardent supporter.

One thing, everyone can accept is that there has been a decline of Scottish Labour, but few choose to explore why, who is to blame, and fewer to come out with solutions. What Scottish Labour needs is radical internal reform of the way the party works, how campaigning works, and how elected officials discharge their duties in the communities they were elected in. When Lord George Robertson says Leonard is “part of the problem and not part of the solution”, he isn’t correct. Leonard inherited a failed party, a party which is dysfunctional and a party without a vision for the future. He didn’t inherit a party united, so laying all the ills of Scottish Labour at his door isn’t fair. Does Richard Leonard have his problems, he does, one of which is his presentation abilities, and choice of material at FMQs. But I ask myself, does he have experienced staffers that are supposed to help him? If yes, why aren’t they doing a better job? You could also ask as Lord George Robertson who is touted as an experienced campaigner, why in the 3 years of Leonard’s leadership did he and others of the right wing of the party never reach out to him?

The reason is simple, they would rather see him fail and go back to having a Blairitie run Scottish Labour Party; this is the party model that caused the working class people of Scotland to turn their backs on. These people think that there can be a return to the days of Blair, a golden age of election wins. How stupid is that? The days of Blairism, rebranded as progress or Fabians or some other rubbish are gone. The Blairities did so much harm to Scottish working class communities while in office, they are suffering what the Scottish Conservatives did, exiled to the wilderness. Scottish Conservatives spent 40 years in the wilderness before getting a second chance. Working class people remember it was the right wing of the Labour Party that brought in the bedroom tax and also ATOS assessments which left many in poverty and on the brink of poverty. Blairities seem to think that people have such short term memories that this is all forgotten, it isn’t.

In what must be a baffling diatribe, George Robertson said Leonard was “more unpopular in Scotland than the dreadful Dominic Cummings”. This is called throwing shit in an attempt to get it to stick, other Blairities, the MSPs said no one knew who Richard Leonard is; so you can’t have it both ways. Why would Richard Leonard be more unpopular when he isn’t in power, so it’s a nonsense statement and is also a nonsense comparison!

A question, who might ask is why is Robertson not offering up preference for a replacement? The reason is simple, since there is a plot, first up to declare themselves as potential leader gets tarred, and so does their leadership.

Richard Leonard quitting isn’t as George Robertson said “would be a start” in Scottish labour trying to revive its fortunes. If that was the cause, bad leadership, why didn’t he call for resignations of Dugdale, or Murphy or Lamont? Dugdale was always wrong on major decisions, Murphy completely misjudged the mood of the population and Lamont was so out of her depth that she was leader in name only. Recent polls put the party on 14 per cent support for next year’s Holyrood election and forecast a lost of 6 of the 24 MSPs it won in 2016. The current trend for Scottish Labour is poor, but this is a party which is at present unfit to mount a campaign.

Scottish Labour at present unfit to mount a campaign!

There is no creative vision; there is no real long term narrative, there is a poorly trained activist base. For example, it is 4^th September 2020; I have heard nothing from my CLP during the entire time of lockdown, this also includes nothing from any of the 4 elected councillors. This is why I keep saying that Scottish Labour needs a new campaigning model; the one in use is broken.

Robertson added about the demise in polling:

“Jeremy Corbyn resigned having got 32% in the last general election, Ed Miliband resigned when he got 30% in the 2015 election, Kezia Dugdale resigned after the 2017 election and she got 27%, whereas Richard Leonard got 17% and has now got down to 14%”.

Covid has restricted activism, so Robertson is comparing apples and oranges, but trying to pick a point in history, re the Corbyn to explain the decline is entirely disingenuous. For 6 months during Covid, the party has been out of sight, out of mind on the streets. A key marker of Scottish Labour decline was 2007, there was a trend started prior to this election year which goes further back. The decline of Scottish Labour started under Blairism, it was policies enacted in Westminster under Tony Blair which caused so much harm These policies some mentioned above caused people turned away from the party. Of course Lord George Robertson doesn’t want to talk about that.

Finally, speaking on BBC Radio Scotland, Lord Robertson said:

“I was the leader of the Scottish Party before 1997”.

All I can say in response to that is that his tenure was so unmemorable that I can’t remember it at all, I rmemeber him as defence sec and going to NATO, but Scottish leader! Interestingly, he did say:

“We want to recover in Scotland in order to produce a Labour government at the next election at the UK level and it can only be done if we have a new leader in Scotland, and we have a different attitude to the Scottish people to recover where we used to be.”

So, what is this admission of the need for a “different attitude to the Scottish people”?

Could it be; recognition of what I have blogged about since I first started this blog which certain people in elected positions took exception to?

Yours sincerely

George Laird

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University