This last week will probably be looked back on as a defining moment in the Scottish Labour party’s history. After last Friday we have dominated news programmes and columns for all the wrong reasons, with the Scottish National party letting us tear us apart without interruption. However, this week has also given us a chance to reflect on what we need as a party, what we need in a leader and what the country needs from us. Our future depends on formulating radical policies, raising the tone of debate in Scotland and uniting behind our new leader.
Preoccupied with the referendum for the past two and a half years, we have had a dearth of bold policies to the extent that some people do not know what a vote for Labour is. Now that the referendum is in the past for us, but is still very much distracting the SNP, we have the chance to grab the public’s attention. As the media is focused on us already we should use it as an opportunity to present radical Labour policies to voters.
A myth perpetuated by the SNP for the last five weeks is that the country is split 55-45. That Labour voters who voted ‘Yes’ simultaneously switched party permanently, deaf to anything we have to say. This is wishful thinking on its part. These voters are not lost, far from it. It is with radical, bold policies that we will win over these voters but also people recently enfranchised and engaged. The new party leader will have to run on a platform of unity, of putting the referendum in the past and ignoring the SNP whenever possible in favour of our own policies and message.
However, there is no point in having these ideas if you cannot communicate them clearly and this is only possible if the tone of the debate in Scotland changes. One slogan during the last leadership campaign was ‘You can’t out-Salmond Salmond’, which was proved true in the last three years. The arrogant bluster in the chamber led to a torturous debate which was hard to watch as a politics geek, let alone a voter. The same mantra applies now to Nicola Sturgeon. Whoever wins needs to distinguish themselves in tone and rhetoric both from the SNP and Sturgeon who are still focused on the referendum with relentless negativity. Only last night the soon-to-be first minister reduced herself to the status of a heckler, labelling us ‘Red Tories’. Our next leader needs to rise above the sniping and guffawing debate that we have recently endured and with it take the debate to a more mature and engaging level, forcing the SNP to rise with us or else look weak and childish.
Whoever our leader is on the 13 of December, it is vital that we unite behind them, giving us the best chance of getting back into government in the general election in 2015 and the Scottish parliament election in 2016, and allowing us to implement our policies for the first time in five and nine years respectively. This next leader needs to transform the Scottish Labour party so that we can transform Scotland.
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Catherine Vallis is a member of Progress. She tweets @CateVallis
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As a former Labour Party member it seems to me that you inhabit a parallel universe, probably on the planet Denial. I seem to remember your leaders in Holyrood accusing the S.N.P. of being the ones “…preoccupied by the referendum..,” the same party that managed to continue to govern the country far more competently than Westminster. I do hope, however, that you do manage to grab the public’s attention; nothing is better guaranteed to point out the utter vacuity of the Labour “vow” to the Scottish electorate. You call for “…bold, radical policies…” . It’s hard to imagine “…bold, radical policies…” coming from a party that has spent most of the last forty years trailing after Thatcher, Blair and now Farrage. As for “……relentless negativity…,” did you not listen to Johann in the Scottish Parliament? Did you not listen to the output of Bitter Together?
About three years ago, I joined the Nationalists, thinking that in the event of a yes vote in the referendum it might be possible to rejoin a newly constituted Scottish Labour Party. Not any more. The antics of the above mentioned Bitter Together, the sight of Labour Party M Ps being marched up Buchanan St like an overgrown school trip to defend the Westminster/Whitehall Establishment dancing on the panic button, the “vow” (already unravelled) cobbled together by viceroy Broon after about one sixth of the electorate had already voted, turned my stomach.
The phrase “Labour Party” is spat out by most people I know in Scotland, and not just by yes voters. Face it Catherine, you’ re finished in Scotland, and probably in England and Wales as well.