Congratulations to Alex Salmond on his re-election as the first minister of the Scottish parliament. What a victory it was. Mr Salmond and his crew not only succeeded in remaining the largest party in Holyrood but they now have an overall majority. When the parliament was first being established, Donald Dewar, Scotland’s first ever first minister, assured Tony Blair’s cabinet and the wider Labour party that he had devised a system that would ensure the nationalists could never gain more than half the seats in Edinburgh. How wrong. How naive.
As the dust settles across former Labour heartlands, the party must take a long hard look at itself and ensure radical action is taken. Now is not the time to be bold. Following the nationalists’ dire performance back in 2003, they did not crawl away and lick their wounds – they decided to study how New Labour won elections and invested in voter ID technology used by the American Democrats.
Copying the New Labour approach of listening to what messages the voters wished to hear, they were relentless in answering every question ‘on message’ and, remarkably, they kept their team together on this. If it was said that the Labour team in 1997 had to check a pager before knowing what line to take, then today it is the very same with the Nats, only this time they are checking their Blackberrys and iPhones.
So what now for Labour in Scotland?
Our biggest problem is the perception that all the big guns go down to London to take seats there and, while there is some truth to this, it has now become fact in media circles. If we are brutally honest there is no member of the Labour group at Holyrood who could take on the leadership and change the way journalists think about this and, through them, the general public. There is no member of the Labour group at Westminster who could take on the role of Scottish leader without it being spun as London takes control and the party being anti Scottish. Arguments would be made against a member of the European or local government group as well.
Perhaps then we must look for something else, something that could bring a bit of magic to the party in Scotland. Let’s look to our cousins in the USA, on the Sunday talk shows you will often see not the president, senator or governor but the ‘National Party Chair’ or ‘State Party Chair’ discussing the latest issues. These individuals are often Party grandees but in some cases celebrities within their home state, who have the ability to speak directly to the viewing public in a way party leaders are too often constrained from doing.
What joy it would bring to many to watch Alex Salmond been taken to task by say, Lord John Reid, Sir Alex Ferguson or indeed Richard Wilson … in fact maybe Richard Wilson is just the man, a son of Greenock, and major TV star he is often the face of Labour’s party political broadcasts and the last Labour candidate to be elected and serve a full term as the rector of the University of Glasgow. Perhaps he could help Labour return to those Camelot days in Scotland.
I do believe it !
Euan is doing a bit of dreaming there. Careful Euan. You are suggesting that a party official, unelected by the public, be wheeled out to challenge the duly elected SNP leader, with a huge mandate to his party’s credit? Bit of a democratic deficit there. Somehow don;t think the dream will fly. Dead porker.
dead ducks flying pigs, dreams are free ,and a way of letting off steam,bit like aggression ,Scotty.
This would be just a bit of a gimmick. We need to get the the main cause of our defeat. Voters were prepared to vote SNP because, rightly or wrongly, they are seen to support Scotland’s interests better than labour. We need to take a more pro-Scottish agenda, and not just instantly dismiss everything that would benefit Scotland, just because the SNP also support it – alcohol pricing for instance. Or more meaningful devolved powers. Why doesn’t Scottish Labour support devolving corporation tax, or the crown estate when it would benefit Scotland? We are starting to look the same as the Tories in Scotland – against any progress – When it would actually strengthen the union to have a stronger Scottish parliament. Instead we hammered home an anti-independence message that wasn’t taken seriously because everyone knows there would be a referendum. And we didn’t propose a better alternative.
Interesting how, if you keep proclaiming twaddle , it becomes received wisdom. Just for the record, the proposals for the Scottish Parliament to be elected by a combination of FPTP constituency seats and Additional Member regional seats were derived from the Final Report of the Scottish Constitutional Convention. True, the Nats and the Tories played no part but it is re-writing history to suggest this was some cunning plan of the late Donald Dewar to thwart Nat advances. The intention was that the new Parliament should reflect “the diversities of its communities”. Not so wrong an ambition and hardly naive.
DW says we are starting to look like the tories in Scotland; we started looking like the tories as soon as we became New Labour under those arch conservatives Blair, Brown & Mandelson.
DW hits many nails on the head with his post. To stop people like me quoting ‘The Labour & Unionist Party’ Labour needs to be competing with the SNP to make life in Scotland better. The only way to do that is strive for more economic levers for Holyrood to help grow the Scottish economy. Anything else is simply moving deckchairs on the Titanic.
This article is a joke, right?
and its a funny (peculiar) old thing this aggression malarkey aint it.I think its Northants that has just introduced fishing for mental (sorry,to be short) patients because it is ‘soothing’.Well I think that may well be because it is aggressive not you know, sitting calmly in nature etc. You yoik the creature out ,yes you put it back but you have been competitive with it and you have won ? is that right. Loads of blokes come here to in North Ken .to the canal ,saw a big eel yoiked out the other day ,as the bloke asked for admiration I could not give as I passed by he became really angry ,that I was a snob nature nutter etc.but I ‘m not especially,I just though poor eel what’s it done to you? I know some Rumanian (?) blokes killed and ate a swan didn’t they ,there I did think that was awful but they probably were very hungry. SO ,I do think an amount of aggression is a normal human thing,obviously ,and it gets diverted into competition doesn’t it . Society has evolved mechanisms to accommodate this, so that aggression can be cathected without building up into violence . Football is the big one ; there’s the I’m better than you one and my culture is more meaningful than your culture . National pride in stuff can compensate for individual feelings of inadequacy or foiled aspirations,that’s the one politicians try to flog a lot .The trick now is going to be to knit our aspirations across our national diversity . Well it’s a war now isn’t it ,it ‘s Britain against the rest of the world just like last war I think we Brits can pull together, that’s where our aggression ,our energy must go ,not turning against each other but by God are the Tories having a go at making that happen though ! this week excuses for benefit cheating blah blah blah . Yet most Conservatives do not invest their money in this country and the rest of us don’t have any money.
One of the reasons I gave my constituency vote to the SNP rather than Labour is that Scottish Labour has lost its moral compass. On several issues since 2007, the SNP has occupied the moral high ground: over the release of Al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds (whose conviction for the Lockerbie bombing, there is good reason to believe, was unsound); over legislation to establish a minimum price for alcohol; and over mandatory prison sentences for carrying a knife. It’s not just that Labour was on the wrong side of these debates: it gave the impression, to me at any rate, of opposing the SNP for opportunistic and partisan reasons. In the alcohol case, for example, the arguments it put forward – that setting a minimum price would: (a) boost the profits of supermarkets and (b) penalise “moderate” drinkers – were, respectively, inconsistent and tenous. Labour had previously opposed the introduction of a special levy designed to deter the building of out-of-town supermarkets, while the level at which the SNP government proposed to set the minimum price would have cost drinkers, on average, an extra £6 per year – hardly a “punitive” price to pay for a measure which was strongly supported by medical professionals and the police, who have to deal with the scourge of binge drinking. Until the Labour Party adopts a more responsible approach to social policy, it will certainly not be getting my vote.
How does this even approach a plausible and effective response to the scale of our defeat? We won only 2 constituencies out of 73 on the list vote. Putting Richard Wilson on a talk show or two is not going to turn that around. No, rebuilding actually requires that we look at what went wrong. Failure to differentiate ourselves from the SNP, giving little to some of our supporters and making a presidential campaign that we could never hope to win more, not less, likely. A lack of policies distinct from those of the national party. Years of insufficient voter ID. A disenchanted core vote that’s less and less willing to vote (leading to turnout below 35% in one seat). Unworkable and illiberal campaign pledges (like that on knife crime) that drove away the switchers we needed to win this time. A campaign strategy left wrong-footed by late movements in the polls. These were all serious problems, and no doubt many other members in Scotland could suggest more. We need to deal with them. Scotland is willing to vote for us if the alternative is the Tories. 2010 showed that, as did the results in Eastwood and Dumfries. But if we want to maintain that and stop Nat dominance spreading wider, stop us being marginalised in local council elections next year, we actually need serious change. That is not Richard Wilson.
well indeed and everyone knows that ,it was just a light hearted comment , and he’s an intelligent thoughtful man that people might listen to. the rest of what you say is serious food for thought of course.