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Labouring to get things right

May 19

Posted by Guest Blog in Elections, Parties | 73 Comments

Another guest post today, and another look at the reasons Labour lost the election so heavily.  This time, John Mackay is the author.  John was Scottish Labour’s Holyrood candidate for Caithness, Sutherland and Ross, and was also his party’s candidate in the 2010 General Election in Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross.

First things first, Labour had no chance of winning the Scottish election.  It was all about the scale of defeat. Forget what the polls said a few months ago, it wasn’t a case of which party was going to win; it was by how many.

Two things conspired to give Labour a hammering: SNP money and Labour incompetence.  I’ll touch on the former then concentrate on the latter from my perspective as a Labour candidate.  Scotland’s political media also get an honourable mention.

When a political party has the financial clout the SNP had, it enables them to run a blitz-like, Presidential campaign that builds and builds to saturation point come polling day.  Their strategists ran an excellent campaign to the extent it seemed like many of Scotland’s print, television, radio and online journalists were working within SNP Media HQ as well.

The SNP recognised Iain Gray was largely unknown and managed to easily frame the election as a personality contest.  There was only ever going to be one winner between Alex Salmond and Iain Gray in that sort of competition.  The SNP’s money then made sure of victory.  Yes, Labour contributed to its own defeat and the eventual scale of victory but I’ll get to that.  The Scottish Election in 2011 was won primarily because it was a well-funded Presidential campaign.  That must not be forgotten.

Before I get to my own party’s failings, what has happened to Scotland’s political journalists?  Why weren’t they highlighting the insanity of the SNP’s flagship policies?  Why weren’t they telling the Scottish people about the economic lunacy of five more years of a council tax freeze, continuing free higher education, increased NHS spending, free prescriptions, the lie of no public sector redundancies and 100% of energy being provided by renewables in 2020?  These policies will have Scotland admitting itself to the economic madhouse in a few years.  There will be no need to call for anyone in a white van with a straitjacket.

It will be pointed out that Labour copied, in whole or part, many of these policies.  I agree entirely but the media really should have been more rigorous in questioning both parties spending commitments at a time when the policies listed above simply can’t be paid for.

Whilst I’d have loved Labour’s manifesto to be realistic and to acknowledge the financial constraints that we as a government would have had to work within, the election was all about money and personality.  Even if we’d had the best manifesto ever written it would have had little effect and only slightly reduced our defeat.  There will be those who say that with decent, realistic, alternative policies Labour could have framed the election differently. I disagree.

So why was Iain Gray Scottish Labour’s leader?  And how did we come to run a negative campaign that started by being anti-Tory and Westminster focussed but then changed tack to being anti-independence?

I honestly believe Iain Gray was the best of a decidedly average Labour bunch at Holyrood.  It is this that is at the heart of the party in Scotland’s problems.  Twelve years on from devolution and Scottish Labour is still sending its best people down to Westminster (with very few exceptions).  At the next Scottish election in five years time, Labour has got to get its best MPs to Holyrood.

It’s been said there is no chance the likes of Jim Murphy and Douglas Alexander will become MSPs, as they are too ambitious at Westminster.  I hope this is wrong.  If you’re a Labour Party member then your twin ambitions are social equality and social justice.  For elected Scottish Labour members, Holyrood is the place you can most readily influence those causes.

The party also has to ensure it gets its best young talent to Edinburgh.  I hate to say it but the Labour benches in the last Scottish parliament were intellectually bereft.  There were far too many MSPs who were ‘time served’ in other roles within the Labour movement.  One of the few good things to come from losing so many MSPs unexpectedly is that we got rid of much of the deadwood.

Finally: the campaign.  I can only imagine Iain Gray’s strategists decided to go with an anti-Tory, Westminster focussed campaign because it was the one freshest in their memories from last year’s General Election.  Admittedly that was a successful campaign but it was in a different election.  The Scottish electorate is more sophisticated than we gave them credit for and no wonder they were leaving a party in droves that was fighting an election they weren’t even voting in.

To make things worse, Labour decided to change course to an anti-independence strategy with a fortnight to go.  It was the latter campaign that ensured the SNP got their majority as it nailed home the message Labour had been running a negative and irrelevant campaign.  We would still have lost but not by as much and not to an overall majority. Here’s a thought: it was a Scottish election, not a Westminster election nor an independence referendum.  Labour can’t make that mistake again.

Jim Murphy is chairing a review into Scottish Labour and he must see that he is a big part of the solution if he were to be an MSP and the Scottish Labour leader.  Much has been made of a Westminster MP leading that review because it was a Westminster focussed campaign that caused many of Labour’s problems.  That is missing the point though.  It was Labour in Scotland that decided to run a Westminster-focussed campaign, not Labour at Westminster.

The party doesn’t have to do too much to resolve its current problems: Get good MSPs in Holyrood.  Get realistic and credible policies.  And contest the next Scottish election on issues relevant to the Scottish parliament.  It really is that simple.  Oh, and if there’s a transport tycoon out there with a social conscience who wouldn’t mind slipping us a few million quid, that would be handy as well.


Scottish Labour – a View before the Review

May 18

Posted by Guest Blog in Holyrood, Parties | 26 Comments

Another guest, this time from Jamie Glackin, Labour activist and SEC Member.

The election result on 5 May was the most significant in living memory. Much has been said about why but after taking some time to reflect on it I would like to contribute to the catharsis. Firstly, as an active member of the Labour Party, I have to conclude that my party leadership can’t carry all the blame. It was a collective and institutional one that we all share in. We did indeed offer a vision for Scotland, but it turned out to be a pretty dismal one.

Unfortunately, our election campaign fell into the trap of thinking that it knew what the voters wanted: Stuff the Tories, Thatcher hate figure, Independence Bogeyman. As the results show, Scotland had its own ideas: A confident Scotland taking its own place in the world, A fair Scotland that is always on the side of hard work and enterprise, and a caring Scotland that always puts its own people at the front of the line, not the back of it. My argument is that all of this can be achieved without the need for full decapitation. But major surgery is required if we want to save the patient.

The reality is that the Labour Party in Scotland is a slave to two masters. On the one hand, Scotland seems quite happy to supply Labour MPs to Westminster, knowing that that they can best elucidate the views of Scotland, albeit in a compromised manner. This is an example of the pragmatism of the Scottish people. We are realistic enough to know what’s on offer and to make an informed choice on that basis. So that bit’s alright then for Scottish Labour? Probably not as it happens, but more on that later.

On the other hand, we have never quite got to grips with devolution, and what that means. And in my view, this is where it all goes wrong. Scottish Labour should be there to facilitate the aspirations of a Nation. And the forum to deliver these aspirations is the Scottish Parliament. Not the other way round. As Labour, we consistently attempted to impose our policies on a public that has long since widened its scope on who it thinks can best represent those aspirations. The recent election campaign served as a reminder of why a race to the bottom in Scottish Politics can only ever result in one winner- the one with the record, freshness and vision. And rather than supply a competing vision, we offered Scotland more of the same. So when SNP members go on television and claim we fought a ‘Negative’ campaign, I believe that they are right. Labour hasn’t fought a positive one since 1997.

Some would have it therefore that Scottish Labour is institutionally incompetent. I think that’s harsh and in throwing missiles at John Smith House actually ignores the real issues facing the Party.

We were founded as a party of the people, and somewhere along the line, an institutional malaise set in. Human nature is a bit like that. We changed, slowly but surely, as champions of the underdog and the working classes to being managerial autocrats. Sure, we knew all the vocabulary required to protect our authority, but failed to connect with the values that saw Labour born at all. People have angrily told me that despite casting their votes Labour’s way for generations, that we still have slums, we still have generational worklessness and we still have a broken underclass, mired in alcohol, violence and substance abuse. Yet prosperity has visited other parts of Scottish society to the extent that a chasm now exists between a relatively small demographic. The issues that we face are so deep rooted that cosmetic changes to our institutions, including the Labour Party, can’t even begin to deal with them.

The challenge facing the Labour Party therefore is how to be the party of the Scottish People again. In my view, we can only hope to attempt to do this when we realise that the fundamental questions we have to address concerns the ambitions of a country. Institutionally regarding Scotland as a region of the Labour Party simply doesn’t cut it.

We can’t even start to think about policy failures until we embrace this point. Whilst there will always be convergence on the policies of the left, last week’s election should leave the Party in no doubt that identity is just as important to the people as policy, if not more so. Indeed, there were many areas of the SNP Manifesto that deserved very close scrutiny. Instead however, they had a free run at a campaign because they knew exactly what they were for and where they were going, to the extent that the policies of the other parties simply didn’t matter. We resorted to tried and tested methods. Vast amounts of doors knocked, thousands if not millions of leaflets distributed, votes counted and in the bag. The SNP had other ideas: a media policy suspiciously short on shortbread tin politics, no lamenting pipers. Only a clear message that regardless of what’s happening at Westminster, only the SNP were capable of delivering a Parliament capable of elucidating Scotland’s identity and ambition.

So let’s face facts. Surely the accusation that we are a party ruled by London is correct? Every member of the NEC resides within the M25 (with the exception of the excellent Callum Munro, the Young Labour Rep.) Colleagues from the North of England have raised concerns about this with me since the election of the NEC last year. I’m not saying for a minute that the current executive are without talent or commitment to the party, but I fear that there is a danger that London-centric ‘Progressiveness’ becomes the dominating mantra of a party that the rest of the UK just doesn’t get. Whilst I don’t know the mind of Ed Miliband, I can’t help thinking that he believes that Scottish Labour lost a Scottish election simply because we lacked a ‘Progressive Centre.’ Whatever that means.

Surely then there can be only one direction of travel for the Scottish Labour Party? As a party we finally need to grapple with the question of what we are for. We are either the voice of our communities or we are not. We are either the voice of industry, of business, of victims of crime and the police, of the hopeless, of the public sector, of taxpayers, of women, of all classes, or we are not. Scotland is a Nation made up of all of these and much more and its from each intertwined strand that a coherent vision for Scotland comes. And in listening to all of our people and in understanding what a country wants, we define what we are for. So there is no need for the perpetual internal argument about shifting to the left or right. The people tell us where they expect us to be and we live up to that expectation. (This lesson applies in England and Wales too!)

I personally believe that when Alex Salmond talks of the ‘Inevitability’ of Independence, that there might be some truth in that, but not to the extent that some of his party would like. The Scottish People are capable of differentiating the hubris of politicians from the issue at large. And two weeks ago they told all the parties in Scotland the direction that they want to go. I believe that closely resembles the Devolution Max option, where Scotland has total fiscal autonomy and responsibility for its own affairs, save those reserved, by agreement of the Scottish people to the UK Government. Opponents will argue that this proposal is Independence Lite, or a guarantee of the break-up of the United Kingdom.

Well, I’m sorry but if it weren’t broke why would be trying to fix it? The Union itself has never been a solid state entity anyway. What it is and how it is viewed has always changed, evolved and adapted. My argument therefore is that the Labour Party has to recognise that the people have spoken and now is the time to start being the party of the people again, regardless of where that might lead us.

For the Scottish Labour Party? I can see little option but exactly that. The Scottish Labour Party, and not the Labour Party in Scotland. Governed in Scotland, by a Scottish Executive robustly representing their constituencies, trade unions and socialist societies, reflecting what people are actually telling them. With a leader who is an MSP and a deputy who is a Westminster MP. With constituency parties representing Holyrood Boundaries, not Westminster ones, holding meetings open to everyone, not just party insiders forming supporters clubs.  In short, a Scottish Party with its own unique identity, pressing for the renewal of itself and its country, always recognising the distinctiveness of Scotland. A party that realises that since 1999, we now have a Parliament that is no longer an infant, but ready to take its first steps into adulthood, and all the responsibility that goes with it.

The nitty gritty stuff, I leave up to you. But make no mistake, unless we seize this opportunity to become the party of the People of Scotland with the vision and the ambition that entails, then we are heading very quickly to irrelevance. Given the SNP dominance at Holyrood, the potential is there for policy to creep slowly but surely to the right. Scottish Labour have to play a role in the new Parliament and in the future to challenge this.

And of the referendum? Well we have to face facts and say that we simply don’t know how the Scottish People will vote. It might be for full Independence. And if that’s what Scotland wants, then Scotland will surely get it. And if that happens (which it might,) let’s make sure that there’s a Scottish Labour Party on the other side.

Jamie Glackin

SEC Member

West of Scotland, Mid Scotland & Fife

Long road back for Scottish Lib Dems

May 17

Posted by The Burd in Holyrood, Parties | 22 Comments

Time for someone on this here blogspace to offer condolence and encouragement to the Scottish Lib Dems.  Enough of kicking a party when it’s down and at least, it has taken the first tiny steps on the long road back.

There are clearly benefits to be gained from moving quickly from one leader to another.  No power vacuum, no unseemly public scuffles, no washing of dirty linen in public.  But there are also downsides.  An anointment, which the last two leadership “elections” have been, means there is no breathing space in which ordinary party members will get the chance to have their say and shape their future.  The chosen one gets to consult and listen, or simply impose his or her will and view on the party.  Reality demands it be the former – there are few candidates to choose from after all.

Willie Rennie has today been declared the new Lib Dem leader.  He was, if truth be told, the only credible – or at least most credible – candidate in the tiny group of Lib Dem MSPs.  His experience as party CEO and also as Chief of Staff for the Parliamentary Group, and his time as an MP, give him a hinterland that should serve him well.  By all accounts, he is affable, media savvy, intelligent and should do well.  I can’t help thinking, though, that the Liberal Democrats have a bit of a conveyor belt on this style of politician, not just here in Scotland but across the UK.  It’s the 40 something male thing, of higher than average income background, creating an identikit of leaders in recent years.  No wonder Vince Cable comes across as a breath of fresh air.

But what kind of liberalism does Willie Rennie believe in?  Is he Orange Book or more socially democratic?  Does he belong to the seemingly more Scottish tradition of liberalism as portrayed by the likes of Charles Kennedy and Menzies Campbell or the more strident economically-focused one epitomised by Huhne, Laws and co?

It matters because it will determine how long the road back is for the Liberal Democrats here in Scotland.  They have some time to take a long hard look at themselves and work it out:  the next Parliamentary elections are some years away after all.  But there is the small matter of council elections next year:  these could represent the start of a revival or perhaps achieving stability by holding their own rather than making gains, or result in further electoral punishment.  If the Lib Dems lose their well established toehold in local government across the country one really does have to fear for their future.

There is space for a vibrant political force representing either half of the Liberal Democrat tradition, but it would be a brave man who would lead his party towards the Orange book style of policy and politics in Scotland.  This would appear to be what the Scottish people rejected so emphatically on 5 May.  There is a need for a right of centre, less interventionist economically-focused political party, yet, there is also a need for a party that makes thoughtful social policy its core purpose too.  Both the SNP and Labour have swept up tenets of both, crowding the centre in recent years.  So a nimble Liberal Democrat party could straddle them if it can get the policies, the strategy and the tactics right.

Willie Rennie needs to make his mark and somehow achieve coverage -  no mean feat when reduced to a parliamentary group of five.  One way of doing this would be to pick up on bits of the SNP manifesto that chime with sections of the Liberal Democrat one.  Take forward members’ bills where appropriate;  shame them on reducing the priority of other measures when needed.  But make it constructive opposition.  Underlying the seismic Scottish election result was a sentiment of dislike for the yah-boo politics that everyone – including the SNP – indulged in in the last four years.  The people have spoken, they want this SNP government to have a fair run at it, and it is incumbent on all parties to follow the will of the Scottish people, while still managing to hold the government to account.

It’s a tough job, without the much larger task of reinventing and rejuvenating a severely wounded party.  The burd wishes Willie Rennie well and will watch with interest to see if he is up to it.

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Should Labour wrap itself in a Saltire?

May 16

Posted by Jeff in Ideology, Parties | 25 Comments

There is a simple reason why proponents of independence regularly urge the Scottish element of unionist parties to breakaway from their UK domain. It is not necessarily because they believe it will make them stronger but rather because it will make Scotland appear more independent.

A nation that has a separate legal system, a separate education system, separate political parties and a separate Parliament always has a decent chance of being a separate country. This factor may not be at the forefront of unionist parties’ thinking as they sift through the wreckage of their respective 2011 campaigns but to what extent they wish to be seen as ‘Scottish’ political parties will be a top discussion point for each of them.

Labour specifically has always had a difficult time being Scottish within a UK group, swinging between criticising the SNP for trying to ‘own’ the Saltire and waving that same flag as much as it can, on occasion, seemingly trying to ‘win’ it back.

For me, Lord Foulkes has typified the unease and awkward narrative that Labour has plagued itself with. The former Lothians MSP’s complaints that Scotrail trains would have a Saltire livery and his criticism that the SNP were making things better and ‘doing it on purpose’ never really stacked up.

So, should Labour, as many seem to be suggesting, wrap itself in a Saltire at future elections?

A persuasive argument for such a move was the rather bizarre cameo appearances from Balls, Miliband and Izzard during the election campaign. Their contribution was always unclear, trying to enunciate a knife crime policy that they had no link to and then sermonising on UK economics that just felt irrelevant given the context, before hopping on a train in the afternoon and out of the fray. Ed Miliband held Scotland up as a springboard to success at Westminster but then spent May 6th in Kent to celebrate a half-decent performance down there in the garden of England. The Labour leader may have been better served heading North and showing real leadership by commiserating with his colleagues.

For me, Labour’s solution is not to split off its Scottish element away from London HQ, as the Nats would wish it. The solution is simply to improve communication between London and Edinburgh. A party blueprint for policy at Westminster and how a Holyrood agenda can dovetail into that blueprint, or vice versa, should in theory be a powerful campaign weapon, particularly against an SNP that only ever has one side of the cross-border approach to a problem at its disposal.

For renewable power, joined up thinking and cohesive pledges on the Grid (UK policy) and Scotland’s renewable revolution (largely Holyrood’s area) should have been a no-brainer for any of the Westminster-led parties, the Olympics come to the UK next year but no-one sold the Scottish benefits that I could see and even seemingly distinct policy areas such as health and education could have come with the refrain that increased spending in London under Labour means more spending, with shared intellectual economies of scale, under Labour in Edinburgh.

It’s more subtle than ‘now that the Tories are back’ but it is also surely more persuasive and effective. It is basically an explanation of how any union divided can compliment strictly devolved policies but it was curiously absent over the past month or two and it is curiously absent now.

Scotland and Britain used to get its knickers in a twist over Andy Murray and what colours were on his sweatbands and what flag he would hoist if he won a competition. That distraction soon made way for a nationwide acceptance that the guy was an ace tennis player and it really didn’t matter who he belonged to. Labour should learn from that and start realising that it doesn’t matter what colours it is draped in, it is what is under the bonnet that counts.

Progress, but at a snail’s pace

May 14

Posted by The Burd in Democracy, Holyrood, Parties, Society | 44 Comments

There is much to celebrate about the make up of our new Parliament.  Yes, we can lament the loss of experience but some of the gushing eulogies written about some of the departed stalwarts, particularly from the Labour ranks, need a reality check.  Such a sweeping clearout, whether the parties wanted it or not, brings in fresh blood which is, by itself, a very good thing.  Whether or not they will deserve the epithet *talent* remains to be seen…

But in certain key areas, the Parliament is making very slow progress indeed.

Dennis Robertson has found himself wheeled out at the forefront of the SNP group and the subject of much media interest because he is blind.  And even better, has a telegenic dog to guide him.  Dennis is canny so he knows what he’s doing and he deserves his election, not because of his visual impairment, but because he has a lot to offer.  He is clever and a great campaigner on issues that are often ignored or worse, patronised at Holyrood.  He has a careful decision to make – does he become a champion of disabled people simply because he is disabled or does he eschew such issues, as Anne Begg did in her early career, to avoid being defined simply as the blind MSP?  It’s a tough one.  And the bottom line is that it simply should not be remarkable that someone with a visual impairment can be elected:  it should be the norm.

But with Siobhan McMahon becoming the first woman born with a disability, joining Margo MacDonald whose disability has been caused by her long term condition, our Parliament is now more visibly, differently abled.  And hurrah for that.  They will bring a very different perspective and life experience to their work and that is what a more representative legislature is all about.

Readers will be pleased to note that progress was also made on the ethnic status and gender balance of Holyrood.  Women’s representation increased by a whole one, yes one MSP, taking us to nearly 35%. It’s nowhere near the nadir of 1999 but it is progress, if at a snail’s pace.

The Labour group by electoral accident rather than design has achieved almost complete balance with 17 out of 35 MSPs women.  The Conservatives have added to their tally too, with 40% of their group now women.  Margo, of course, achieves 100% while the Scottish Greens are perfectly poised with a woman and man MSP.  But it is the Lib Dems and the SNP who let the side down.

Reduced to a group of five, only one Lib Dem MSP is a woman, 20%.  And despite having a record number of MSPs – 69!  some of us still can’t quite believe it! – a shockingly low number are women.  Nineteen, but Tricia Marwick now doesn’t count as belonging to any group, so the figure is down to 18.  Would I have traded an extra woman MSP for the SNP Group instead of having a female Presiding Officer?  Of course not.  But even at 19, this equates to only 27%, slightly over one in four, SNP MSPs being women.  Disappointing doesn’t cover it.

Already the cry is that something must be done.  Shame no one made that cry before the election when candidates were being selected.  Severin Carrell of the Guardian deserves special mention for championing this issue and he is right:  we need “somebody” to sort this out.  And not just on gender balance but also on ethnic representation.  We have made some progress, going from 0 after the tragic, early death of Bashir Ahmad in the last Parliamentary session, to 2. But at 1.5%, the number of MSPs from the BEM community does not equate with the ethnic diversity of our population which is approaching 4%.

The issue of ethnic diversity is a controversial one – for everyone who comments that there are folk of Italian descent (Linda Fabiani and Marco Biagi being two) and many, many more of Irish descent, they are missing the point somewhat.  This is about melting pots, multi-culturalism and assimilation and ethnic and cultural diversity – far too complex for this post but perhaps worthy of a future one.  There is no one of Chinese or Polish descent, despite both being statistically significant commnities in our society.  Scots Asians yes, but no blacks either from African or Caribbean communities.  Our Parliament should be representative of all our people.  That should be a given.

So what to do, other than moan about it on blog spaces or in newspapers?  I agree with Sev.  Something has to be done and the parties seem incapable of doing it without support and guidance.  We don’t need a new body, there are a plethora of them, particularly on women’s issues:  Engender, the Fawcett Society, the Scottish Women’s Convention.  And now the Hansard Society has got involved.

It needs an all-encompassing organisation with a remit to promote democracy more generally, to address all the issues of under-representation of key groups and communities.  It needs to engage positively with the parties and the work has to start now, before candidate selections begin again.  There is a window open now in which to examine and explore possible solutions but the starting point has to be an acknowledgement by all the parties that there is a problem to be addressed.  And an agreement to work on a cross-party basis to achieve real progress.

 

 

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