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Scottish Labour – Trying to pull a rabbit from an empty hat

Jul 31

Posted by Jeff in Parties | 85 Comments

The Scotland on Sunday, presumably with little else to talk about, has picked up the story of who will be the next Labour leader with the news that Johann Lamont may be a caretaker leader for the next year as Scottish Labour figures out what the best way ahead is and as Jim Murphy and Sarah Boyack complete their review of the party in light of their trouncing back in May.

Opting for a caretaker leader is probably a decent move. The next Holyrood election is light years away and if it is judged that a new leader won’t have that much of an impact on council elections, then it is best to take the time and get the right person in for the long term. The problem that Labour faces in selecting a new leader though, whether it’s today or next year, is laid bare when the bookies’ favourite, Jackie Baillie, has effectively ruled herself out of the job.

Speaking with URTV (it’s a new one on me aswell), Jackie said: “I love this constituency too much to even be contemplating something like that”. Now, of course, this could be a simple bit of humble misdirection which is hardly a rarity in leadership elections but, if taken at her word, Ms Baillie is not interested.

Starting to move down the bookies’ order, you then have:
Ken MacIntosh (5/4 but broke many bridges with recent tv appearances suggesting more of the same Mr Angry type opposition),
Richard Baker (9/1 but arguably far too inexperienced and ‘shouty’ for the role),
John Park (10/1 but doesn’t seem interested),
Johann Lamont (12/1 but hardly an intellectual powerhouse),
Malcolm Chisholm (16/1 but has resigned three times recently and is short of allies in the group),
Hugh Henry (25/1, surprisingly long odds so I can only assume he isn’t interested)

So a bit of a pickle for Labour as it’s not so much that they don’t have a leading contender that they don’t have a viable contender. Indeed, for me, the only person to land a glove on the SNP Government in the few short months since the election is new MSP Kezia Dugdale. Kezia’s campaign to ensure interns get paid a proper salary and that employers meet the National Minimum Wage of £7.15 an hour culminated in attention-grabbing articles stating that the Scottish Government itself is funding bodies with almost 1,000 people paid below this level.

Now, does this mean that Kez should be a contender for leader? No, probably not, we don’t ‘opposition by FOI request’ for a start, but it does underline and indeed undermine the weak challenge from other MSPs in the Labour group.

So what is to be done? Well, with politics now so often focussing on personalities rather than policies the obvious answer is to select someone who is already recognisable, trusted and liked. For me, that means that Scottish Labour needs to tear up whatever structures it has in place and create a looser arrangement whereby Jim Murphy MP can lead Scottish Labour from Westminster and still be effectively in charge of the Labour group in Holyrood.

Many are calling for Scottish Labour to have a stronger Saltire emblazoned on its side and arguably an MP from London leading it does not do that but, on the flip side, this is a great indirect argument in favour of the union. Scottish Labour MSPs working with Scottish MPs in London for the betterment of Scotland within the UK has a dual purpose of improving Labour’s standing with the Scottish electorate and putting in place a strong, positive narrative for the independence referendum campaign.

Furthermore, Jim Murphy has been an excellent critic of the SNP and has seemingly had an unswerving (not to mention unnerving) ability to pick the holes in the Nats’ plans that will bring the public with him. Add to that the fact that he is the Shadow Secretary of State for Defence (chief opponent to Liam Fox), a position that no member of the SNP can reach, and you have a very powerful argument for having Jim at the top of the tree.

The main problem that I would envisage this leaving for the SNP is that it would be being attacked on many fronts. Ed Miliband can provide opposition as UK Labour leader, Jim Murphy would provide opposition as Scottish Labour leader and a LOLITSP (Ken MacIntosh, say) would provide opposition from within Holyrood. Alex Salmond is a formidable politician but he’d be getting attacked on three fronts from his main rivals and, given how long he has been in power, keeping them at bay would be much harder than it has been before, particularly once the cuts begin to bite and Ed, Jim and Ken have such easy lines of criticism available to them.

Scottish Labour may be in the doldrums right now but if it thinks outside the Holyrood box, a bit of red sky thinking perhaps, a brighter new dawn may well await.

(Update – And yes, that does mean we could call Labour’s leadership ‘Jedward’ going forward!)

Is the hacking scandal Miliband’s Clause IV moment?

Jul 12

Posted by Jeff in Parties | 5 Comments

I attended a public event at the London School of Economics this evening with speaker Mehdi Hasan discussing his new book ‘Ed: The Milibands and the making of a Labour leader’, co-authored with James Macintyre.

It’s a good thing that Mehdi touched on gossip and hearsay being taken as gospel for I only knew of the New Statesman Political Editor through Twitter and even then chiefly through less than complimentary comments from Guido Fawkes and Harry Cole etc. So I was surprised, delighted and a little bit embarrassed that Mehdi put on such a captivating, intelligent, insightful and humorous performance for the full 90 minutes. He certainly avoided the twin perils that these political events often risk of the main speaker being either too nervous or too up themselves for it to be an enjoyable performance.

Mehdi even managed to cover himself in glory with his analysis of Scotland when it was inevitably raised from the floor, an area that he freely admitted he wasn’t an expert in. Mehdi suggested that the Labour leader needs a bit of Salmond’s directness and confidence and noted that Ed’s assertion that Holyrood 2011 would be a springboard to success at Westminster betrayed his misunderstandings surrounding devolved politics north of the border (in more ways than one).

Don’t get me wrong, there were imperfections. The preamble talked of Ed Miliband’s ‘unique upbringing’ before discussing how the Labour leader went to the same school, studied the same subject at the same university, joined the same Labour party, went off to work for an MP etc etc, as his older brother. The upbringing wasn’t even unique with his own family let alone the wider world.

However, my real bone of contention amidst the mirth and merriment was Mehdi’s early and repeated assertion that Ed Miliband’s performance over the past 7-10 days may end up being his equivalent of Tony Blair’s Clause IV moment.

The weakness of this position, and indeed Ed’s, was laid out soon after as Mehdi talked of the anger with which Ed’s team directed Mehdi’s way upon learning that this book would be serialised in the Mail on Sunday. Now, how can Ed be a hero in facing up to the News of the World while begrudging an independent journalist serialising his unoffical biography in a certain newspaper?

With that evidence to go on alone, I’m not convinced that Ed Miliband wants the distance between politics and the media that he currently claims.

Anyway, the wider question as to what this hacking scandal will do for Ed Miliband’s prospects is surely undecided and, if positive, is not even really of Ed’s doing. Polling results may well show a bump for the Labour leader in the coming days but that will be more to do with Cameron’s shooting himself in the foot in hiring Coulson and Clegg’s continued ignominy rather than anything Ed has done. A Labour leader that is lowest in the popularity stakes while his party is riding high in the 40+%s is coming from a long, long way behind.

The chief arguments that Mehdi made were that Ed was quickest to call for an enquiry and the quickest to call for Rebekah Brooks to resign. The former is accurate but surely carries little credit for Ed. Nick Davies has completed some incredible journalism for the Guardian amidst this hacking scandal and, consequently, has indirectly rolled a square ball across the six yard line that even Wallace or Gromit could knock into the back of the net, let alone Ed Miliband.

A Clause IV moment involves bravely insisting and delivering something that 80% of your public is against, not calling for something that 80% of your public is already in favour of.

In calling for Rebekah Brooks’ resignation, Ed is hardly blazing a trail there and is probably stepping outside his mandate as a politician. We can have an opinion over who a private company should or should not employ but at the end of the day we have much say over which journalists they employ as, say, which footballer a football club selects.

Indeed, has Ed done anything that goes against public opinion since he became leader? He’s barely reached Clause I, II or III, let alone IV. He took a very weak position on the trade union discussion to the point of anonymity, he has depressingly suggested that the unemployed should lose out on Social Housing and he leapt to the right of Cameron and called for Ken Clarke to resign at the first opportunity. The only area that Ed should be populist on, the economy and the cuts, is the one area where he is most silent, preferring to worry about this strange group ‘the squeezed middle’ than those who are really losing out.

One possible candidate for an Ed Miliband ‘Clause IV’ moment is the proposed scrapping of rules that dictate how his Shadow Cabinet will look, a reasonable move that gives Ed more freedom but still not really comparable with Tony Blair’s staring down the unions.

Not that Ed Miliband needs to outdo any leader that has gone before him, comparisons were made to Neil Kinnock last night even. It is a constraint that Lib Dem and Tory leaders manage to avoid, having to endure your leadership being compared with one predecessor or another. ‘Let Miliband be Miliband’ is a line that Ed himself has used before and, for me, is the Labour leader’s simplest route to success. Slim down the PR team, forget about old-skool repetitive answers, don’t worry about finding something as distracting as an unnecessary Clause IV moment, give credit when credit is due to the coalition and hold your line as a centre-left party that will look increasingly preferable to a coalition that is inflicting pain on a frustrated public. Above all else, don’t overreach in claiming success with small victories, like this hacking scandal which in reality Ed is but a bit-part player in.

Mehdi Hasan gave many reasons for supporters of Ed Miliband, and his well-wishers (of which I include myself), to be cheerful. A key line from the evening, allowing for paraphrasing, was ‘you can’t learn what he can do, and he can learn what he can’t’ meaning that robo-answers and wooden TV performances can be fixed and, when added to Ed’s passion, policies and performance potential, could make for a powerful politician. Blair and Cameron were laughed off as lightweights when they first got going and look at them now.

Curiously though, and to lend a green-tinged ending to this little review, for a Labour leader that rose to prominence as an Environment Secretary and an envoy to Copenhagen, climate change barely got a mention as Ed’s route to success. We have had Red Ed, Blue Ed and now Clause IV Ed (apparently), but Green Ed seemingly doesn’t win elections and, if the Labour leader continues hius early tradition of not following public opinion rather than leading it, I suspect a dramatic push for more action on climate change won’t be Ed Miliband’s Clause IV moment either.

What now for the Scottish Greens?

Jun 21

Posted by The Burd in Elections, Parties | 52 Comments

This time two months ago, Jeff, Malc and I were working ourselves into a lather with prediction-itis.  And getting most of it horribly wrong.  Meanwhile, James was otherwise engaged with proper politicking on the Scottish Greens’ election campaign.  The polls suggested that the Greens would take anything between 5 and 8 per cent of the regional vote:  a big break-through was beckoning, or at least a return to a 2003-sized Holyrood group.

Not that I care to crow – much – but this here burd trumped the Better Nation boys.  Three Green seats I think I said.

As it turned out, the Scottish Greens did well to return with two MSPs intact.  In the face of the SNP juggernaut, it alone managed to hold its vote at regional level and at least stand still in terms of parliamentary arithmetic.  I’m sure it was a huge disappointment to everyone in the Scottish Green Party and to many others but, putting it all in perspective, it wasn’t actually a bad result and it’s hard to see what else the party might have done to turn it into a great one.

But what do they now?  They have reached a fork in the electoral road – which route do they take?

There was much to admire in the Scottish Greens’ election campaign and manifesto, not least their dogged insistence on relatively unfashionable leftist economic policies.  But the outstanding memory I have is how Alex Salmond and the SNP effectively out-greened them.  Sure, on the little stuff – on recycling, on community based issues, the Scottish Greens were solid and worthy.  But on the big stuff – the renewable vision thing, of how it could create a real Scottish economic identity, and jobs – real jobs – in the future, well, the SNP won hands down.

It marked the difference in the level of ambition between the two parties: one aspired to be the next government, the other contented itself with being the home for protest votes.

And the problem with being the erstwhile recipient of the protest vote is that it is fly-by-night.  It cannot be relied upon.  Given its relative youth in party years, this might suffice but it does not provide a solid springboard for increased membership or indeed, representation.

The Scottish Greens have to decide if they wish to become a serious electoral threat.  The right strategy and tactics can pay dividends, as Caroline Lucas and the Brighton Greens can testify.

To replicate their success, the Scottish Greens need to grow and broaden their appeal.  For starters, that means increasing the membership.  The current membership levels are more reminiscent of a club not a fully-fledged political party – with very little effort, the membership could be doubled or even trebled.

Appropriate targeting would encourage members of other parties to switch but also encourage currently non-aligned people to sign up.  And that means getting the demographics right – it’s friends for life the Greens want, not the fairweathered variety.

At the same time, a stronger activist base is required.  The Scottish Greens have a great opportunity to make considerable gains at the local government elections in a year’s time but only if they get candidates in place soon-ish and get out there and work.  In local media, on local issues and on local doorsteps.  There is definitely a gap in the market for a principled and oppositional party to fight hard on local community issues, to offer something different from the mainstream.

Success at this level does not require a national campaign;  instead, the Scottish Greens need to focus relentlessly on winnable wards and concentrate effort in particular councils.  Some high profile gains in certain councils could propel the party into a king-making role (if they want it) and would have much greater impact than a smattering of Green councillors across the board.  To achieve this will involve someone sitting down and reviewing the local scenes, doing the maths and applying the science.  Winning hearts sometimes involves targeting minds.

But before tackling any of this, the Scottish Greens need to think about their party’s personality.  It is currently dominated by their ace in the pack, their co-convenor, Patrick Harvie MSP.  If the SNP can be accused of being a one-man band, what can be said about the Scottish Greens?  Moreover, the party is more of a movement, fluid and free-flowing, yet electoral success requires discipline, structure and format.  Not something that will sit easy with many of its members.

Finally, there is the adherence to principle and refusal to bend to pragmatism.  A lofty, highly laudable position to adapt but realistic?  How attractive is it to the majority of people who try to be Green but do not always succeed? Who aspire to Greendom but know that practicalities often get in the way?  How Green do you have to be to “be a Green”?  At times, it can seem as though rather than engage with the reality of politics, the party is keener on taking an outer stance and sticking to it, no matter what.  At times, it can smack of posture politics.  A refusal to compromise can be seen as dogmatic and downright pig-headed, turning as many voters off as on.

The Scottish Greens can continue on the path they have chosen but that might well mean being resigned to staying as they are:  a small parliamentary presence on the fringes, dependent on a protest vote, that some elections might not swing their way.  But if they wish to move forward, and truly become an electoral force to be reckoned with, they have some thinking to do.  Some shifts, uncomfortable though these might be in the short term, might be required for long term gain.

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Scottish Tory leadership: Runners and riders

Jun 17

Posted by Malc in Holyrood, Parties | 36 Comments

It is now over a month since the Scottish Parliament election which brought a majority SNP Government and the resignations of three party leaders.  Willie Rennie has succeeded Tavish Scott for the Liberal Democrats (though with only 5 MSPs, there was a small pool of potential leaders and no stomach for a fight) but Iain Gray and Annabel Goldie remain in place as “lame duck” leaders until such time as reviews are completed and leadership elections are held.  I’m sure we’ll get to the Labour leadership contest in time, but I’m going to focus on the Conservative contest for the moment.

The first thing is, when will it be?  And the answer is… well, we don’t know.  If the party are happy to conduct it under the old rules (pre-Sanderson review – pdf here) then the election could go ahead at any point.  But should the party want to adopt the recommendations from the Sanderson review, it would have to wait until the review is okayed by its Scottish conference in September.  Assuming that goes okay, the leadership election would subsequently take about 6-8 weeks for nominations, postal ballots to be returned etc…  Thus Annabel Goldie resigned on 7 May 2011 and will likely remain leader until late October at the earliest.  That strikes me as a strange situation.

Nevertheless, let’s have a look at the likely candidates.

In May’s election, the Scottish Conservatives elected 15 MSPs.  Taking Annabel Goldie out of the equation (as she’s standing down) there are 14 potential replacements.  Of those, we can probably rule out Alex Fergusson, Jamie McGrigor, Nanette Milne and Mary Scanlon who are older than auntie Annabel, as well as former leader David McLetchie, Margaret Mitchell and John Scott who are just slightly younger.  Each of those noted are still able politicians, don’t get me wrong – I don’t want to be accused of ageism here – but I suspect that if Annabel Goldie is considering standing down, none of them would seriously consider stepping into her shoes.

So that reduces the field by seven.  Of those remaining, three (Gavin Brown, Ruth Davidson and John Lamont) are in their thirties, two are in their forties (Murdo Fraser and Alex Johnstone) and two are in their fifties (Jackson Carlaw and Liz Smith).  I haven’t heard anything suggesting Alex Johnstone or Liz Smith are considering bids for to be leader, while Gavin Brown is a talent, and I fully expect him to be leader of the Scottish Tories one day, I don’t think it will be this time around.  Indeed, he may well decide that the next leader will have to be the reformer, and the best time to be leader will be after them.  With that in mind, that leaves four candidates whom the media have mentioned in connection with the job:

Murdo Fraser – probably the front-runner at the moment, the Scottish Tories’s deputy leader is expected by most to step up to the top job after a 6 year apprenticeship.  At 45, he’s had the experience of being in the parliament for ten years already and is an able debater.

Jackson Carlaw – was being heavily touted pre-election but let a notional Tory majority of 3,500 in Eastwood fall to Labour’s Ken Macintosh.  Also carries past baggage as deputy chair of the party and some question marks with regards to his financial background.  Sources say he has been trawling for votes already though, so will be interesting to see how that pans out.  I think if he had won Eastwood he’d have had a better chance, but as it is I think he’s fallen back a little.

John Lamont – at thirty-five, he’d be young for the position, but he won a borders constituency seat in 2007 and now holds the biggest non-SNP majority at Holyrood.  He has a large following in the borders and – with Derek Brownlee out of the picture – would be the youthful face of the Scottish Tories.  I’m not sure how much the wider party would support him, but if he can get support from outwith his own backyard (which I understand is quite a large pool of support anyway) he might well be the candidate to beat.

Ruth Davidson – the Scottish Tories’ only new MSP and at thirty-two, their youngest.  But don’t let that fool you.  She’d be a dark horse, but if she decided to stand, it could blow the contest wide open.  She’d get plenty of support from the younger, more pragmatic generation of Tories in Scotland and would be a very different prospect to the other three.  A wild card, to be sure, but one that make the contest more exciting.

I think if we were considering MPs and MEPs as well (ED – it wouldn’t take that long, there are only 2 names in those categories…) Struan Stevenson would get a mention, but it’d be near impossible for him to lead the party from Brussels.  Which, for me, makes the contest between the aforementioned four.

If I was a betting man (which I am occasionally), I’d probably shun the short odds on Murdo Fraser and instead take the slightly less fancied John Lamont.  I mean, it’ll probably be Murdo… but I do have a sneaky feeling that John Lamont might just have the support.  But he’d also be pretty young to lead them.  Perhaps he’ll sit it out and wait for the next time as well.

What do we think?  Could Jackson Carlaw or Ruth Davidson beat either of them to it?  Or will it be a safe handover from Annabel to Murdo?

We’re all Social Democrats now?

Jun 10

Posted by Guest Blog in Ideology, Parties | 134 Comments

A guest post from Aidan Skinner – a Labour activist from Glasgow who considered the election through the prism of Monty Python.

At the (brutally frank and accurate) Refounding Labour Glasgow event last week it was remarked upon that, from a certain point of view, voters had the choice between two social democratic parties, one of which had a flag.

That may be the perception, and it’s one that Labour does need to address, but it’s not true. Not withstanding the fact that Labour is, of course, a democratic socialist party (says so on the tin back of the card in my wallet), the SNP aren’t a social democratic party, despite frequent claims to be. This, for me, was one of the more frustrating parts of the campaign. We indulged in vacuous Nat-bashing. We called them names, we insulted their ideology but we didn’t actually offer any critical analysis of their policies.

And there’s a lot to be critical of. As Neil Findlay pointed out in First Ministers Questions yesterday, they want to cut corporation tax even further than the Tories, and create a differential rate between Scotland and England. Now, the basic idea of cutting corporation tax itself is flawed. It will be ineffective because, like the broader Tory economic policy, it’s economically illiterate. Corporation tax is levied on profits, not revenue. The economic argument that a decrease in tax will increase investment ignores the reality that currently even potentially profitable projects are not being invested in. Across the EU there’s an effective, if unofficial, investment strike. Cutting corporation tax will, in all likelyhood, have no effect on investment in Scotland. At best it might encourage companies to bounce their profits through here, but that model clearly hasn’t done Ireland much long term good and, with the best will in the world, the Caymans have better weather.

It’s not even a progressive policy. It’s utterly, fundamentally, regressive. It will mean even deeper cuts to council services, to universities, to police and to schools than are already planned. Peter Robinson warned that it might be as much as £1.5bn, which is roughly the same amount as the entire cut from the block grant last year.

So the SNP are essentially proposing doubling the cuts to people’s services in order for companies’ taxes to be cut by a third. I don’t think that can be characterised as “social democratic” on any definition. We can see evidence of the disconnect between the SNP image as a social democratic party and their actual policy in other areas, such as the council tax freeze and free prescriptions which benefit the better off, but don’t do anything to help the least well off at all who didn’t pay those anyway.

Labour, on the other hand, went into the last Holyrood election proposing a new patient-centered, integrated National Care Service. We promised to implement the Living Wage, to look at non-profit forms of ownership of Scotrail when the franchise is up for renewal and to invest in the infrastructure necessary to support local communities generating their own renewable power and feeding the surplus into the national grid. There were hints of a new mode of production and enterprise based around co-operative principles.

We didn’t talk about them much, and we should have. People expect Scottish Labour to be a democratic socialist party. When I was knocking on doors and talking about our policies, that was what people responded to. They wanted strong, Labour, democratic socialist policies.

So, are we all social democratics now? Not really. I’m not even sure there are any social democratic parties in Scotland, let alone two.