The Scottish Labour party remains in flux. The way forward is coming into focus, but we need to face up to and address the fundamental issues to move forward as a healthy party, fit to govern.
Last weekend, proposals from the Review of the Party in Scotland were agreed by the Scottish Executive Committee. The proposals will now be debated at both the UK conference and a special one-day Scottish conference in October which will no doubt bring refinements. But the direction of travel seems clear.
The proposals will, for the first time, create an elected leader of the Scottish Labour party, a position which will be open to all elected Labour parliamentarians in Scotland, devolve the party rulebook to the Scottish Labour party in all Scottish matters and will begin the process of restructuring CLPs in Scotland on the basis of Scottish parliament seats rather than following Westminster boundaries.
Essentially, we are told that whatever is devolved to the Scottish parliament, will be devolved to the Scottish Labour party.
These changes are to be warmly welcomed. For too long the Scottish Labour party has had to fight elections with one hand held, however comradely, behind its back.
However, there are other changes that need to be made, fiscal autonomy is an issue for the Scottish Labour party, not just the Scottish parliament.
The influx of party staff from London at election times needs to stop. These are well-meaning, hard-working individuals, who have no understanding of the context in which they are operating. It doesn’t help and it provides our opposition with ammunition.
The new leader must have the genuine support of those within the Scottish party and genuine autonomy from our UK leadership.
It will, perhaps, be easier for Ed Miliband to keep his distance from Scottish politics than it was for his predecessor. It is clear that Scottish MPs have struggled to come to terms with devolution. Now this is politics, so there will still, no doubt, be back stabbing, rumour and ego-clashes aplenty, but we have to end the power struggle between our MSPs and MPs, who need to learn to work together as colleagues.
There is one other issue we need to address. It may be time for the Scottish Labour party to have a debate on what our policy is on independence.
I’ve made the case before in this column, for why the rabid, unthinking unionism of some within our party does us no good as either a party or a nation. It’s time we stopped and thought about it, debated it and came to an informed position which we can robustly argue over the next term.
John McTernan, in his recent article for Progress magazine, said that the best way of dealing with proponents of independence ‘is mockery on the one hand, and ‘daft laddie’ questions on the other hand.’ Isn’t it that kind of arrogance that has got us into our current situation?
A party with independence as its central belief has won, not only a second term in government, but achieved a majority in a parliament which was designed to produce coalitions and minority rule. Do we seriously think that mockery is the best way to engage with that? What message would that give to all those people who voted SNP? I think it would be telling the voters that we think they’re stupid, and if that’s really what we think, then we’ve got deeper problems than can be solved by the reorganisation of our CLPs.
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Judith Fisher coordinates Research and Knowledge Exchange for Strathclyde Business School and stood in 2011 on Scottish Labour’s Glasgow regional list for the Scottish parliament. She writes here in a personal capacity.
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Excellent article. Labour’s approach in Scotland has been wrong. Trying to scare the voters by making out they are stupid if they go for independence is a dare, and it is you that ends up looking stupid if they decide to take you on. Have respect for the voters, and also for the members, by engaging in a proper debate. Devolution has changed the scene completely; increased autonomy for the party north of the border is good if it seeks to involve people in decision-making rather than dictating from above.
Here’s what I actually wrote:
‘[R]ecognition of the strengths of the ties that bind us has led to a new SNP tactic labelled ‘independence-lite’. This is the idea that Scotland, once separated, would share the monarchy, the currency, the central bank, army and naval bases at home and embassies abroad and so on. Hardly the heroic vision of America’s Founding Fathers, or even the leaders of the Baltic nations freed from the yoke of communism. But this is not about logic, it is about removing objections to independence by blurring them. The best response is mockery on the one hand, and ‘daft laddie’ questions on the other hand.
‘How precisely would that work? Do explain,’ is a deadly question for nationalists. The truth is they do not have a clue. They are much like the proponents of AV in the recent referendum, or, to take another example, like the supporters of a republic in the Australian referendum. Their movement is broad, and shallow, and therefore bound together by a host of compromises. One of the traps we too often fall into is to allow ourselves to be portrayed as ‘unionists’. We are not. That word has a long and honourable tradition in British politics, but that is not ours. We are in favour of what exists, the status quo, the longest-lived and most successful single market in the history of the world. Nationalists want a disruptive and transformational change. Let’s get them to explain what that change would be, what it would do, and why they think that would be good.
Take one simple area. A lot of people have been sold on the notion that Salmond is a social democrat. But his first priority economically is a cut in corporation tax. It is an odd sort of social democrat who thinks big corporations are overtaxed. It is, of course, pure Reaganomics – the Laffer Curve. It is fun to point out, but more profound is the unease this provokes which gets the response: ‘Don’t worry, that will be sorted after independence. Mind you, I’m not keen on it myself.’ This is somewhat reminiscent of the promise that the contradictions of capitalism would be easily resolved when we got socialism. The devil is in the detail and we – and Scottish voters – need to know: what are the new anti-poverty strategies that separation would permit? How will life expectancy be increased and standards of education raised?’
I actually think the idea of sharing the pound, the Queen, the Bank of England, embassies and defence bases is laughable. And it doesn’t mock people who voted SNP. They didn’t vote for independence.
And daft laddie questions work because the SNP don’t have a clue about what they really mean by it. Rather than us defining what we are attacking, let them promote the change.
What about the other side of this? Doesn’t this mean that Labour will have to remember England?
The English deserve a Labour party that can say the word England and that has a manifesto dedicated to the English interest.
yugl
Considering the increasing role of the devolved institutions in Edinburgh and Cardiff, isn’t the obvious solution to abolish the Labour Party as a quasi-federal organisation, and instead establish separate Labour parties for Scotland, Wales and England who sit together in a common faction at Westminster?
Firstly it would give the Scottish and Welsh parties the identity and independence reflected by devolution, and the ability to fight elections on policies devised in Scotland without ‘one hand tied behind its back’.
Secondly, it would give redress to Labour’s identity crisis in England. The BNP has had virtually no success in Scotland or Wales. Its electoral base is the white working classes of England. An English Labour Party would be able to cauterise its losses to the BNP and the rise of a vicious kind English nationalism, while claiming to be a true English party.
The current structure of the Labour Party is not fit for purpose. In light of increasing devolution of powers to Scotland and Wales, and the inevitability of ‘English votes for English laws’, it only seems sensible that England, Scotland and Wales should have separate Labour ‘sister’ parties, no?