The Scottish Labour party still has nothing remotely interesting or relevant to say

The question on every Scottish Labour party member’s lips is: ‘Who will be our next leader?’ Unfortunately, the answer on the lips of everyone else in Scotland is: ‘Who cares?’ This is a perfect example of the disconnect between the relative priorities of Scottish Labour and the public who we will, presumably, attempt to engage again at some point in the future. But not yet.

The public are dead right: the issue of who will step into Iain Gray’s shoes as the leader of the party in Scotland is one of supreme indifference to the general public.

Politics at the best of times is of no interest to most ordinary people. They have more important things to worry about, like getting or holding on to a job, childcare costs, or living on a fixed pension at a time of high inflation. So they will only listen, grudgingly, to politicians if they have something remotely interesting or relevant to say. For the time being Scottish Labour does not qualify in that respect.

Why should it? After all, it is not as if we are saying anything the public actually want to hear. Since May we have been far too busy with ourselves – our processes, structures and organisations – to bother with the voters.

Labour’s collapse did not happen suddenly in May 2011: our vote has been deteriorating at every election since the first Scottish parliamentary elections in 1999, at which we won 53 constituency seats and three ‘top-up’ seats from the additional member lists. Twelve years later, Labour in Scotland holds an embarrassing 15 constituency seats, and most of them only marginally. Our so-called ‘strongholds’ in west central Scotland are now swathed in nationalist yellow.

The current leader and his team cannot bear all the blame. Labour’s complacency and arrogance has come home to roost. The threat to the union is as much our doing as the SNP’s, and it is time we started repairing the damage.

Twelve years ago we delivered devolution and then sat back and thought: ‘Job done!’ That was Scotland sorted; now we could get on with governing the UK. But we were wrong. We were wrong not to place Holyrood front and centre in all our campaigning and wrong not to prioritise policy development for Scotland, or to advocate a positive vision for our newly devolved nation.

Meanwhile, the SNP was saying things that were at least not an immediate
turn-off to voters. It wants an independent Scotland. Most Scots do not, but they know a vision when they see one. So by May 2011 they had a choice between the nationalists’ bright, optimistic, undoubtedly inspiring, picture of a future Scotland, and Labour’s plans to jail anyone caught carrying a knife.

Scotland’s long-term challenges do not include our inability to deploy troops or veto the deployment of Trident. They do, however, include how we equip school leavers to find employment and affordable housing. They include how we can encourage the record number of new business start-ups we are going to need, and how we cultivate a new entrepreneurial spirit at every level.

So what kind of Scotland does Labour want? Crucially, is it the same kind of Scotland that the voters want? It can be, provided our priorities are the same as our nation’s. If they are not, that is our fault, not the voters’.

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Tom Harris is MP for Glasgow South and a candidate for the Scottish Labour leadership

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Photo: Scottish Labour