By Keith Aitken in Edinburgh | 27 October 2014
Scottish Labour is looking increasingly likely to elect a Westminster-based politician as its seventh leader since devolution, after an extraordinary weekend of backbiting and bitterness that has brought the party close to meltdown.
Pressure is growing on two senior Scottish Labour MPs, former prime minister Gordon Brown and Shadow international development secretary Jim Murphy, to step in and clear up the mess left by Johann Lamont’s resignation. Both will need persuaded to switch career to Holyrood.
Though such a choice would bring much-needed authority to the post, it also highlights the lack of Labour talent at Holyrood. The few MSPs mentioned as possible candidates – Jenny Marra, Kezia Dugdale, Neil Findlay and Jackie Baillie –all indicated this morning that they are unlikely to stand, and Anas Sarwar, Lamont’s deputy and now acting leader, has also ruled himself out.
Lamont, who led Scottish Labour since its crushing defeat by the Scottish National Party at the 2011 Holyrood election, resigned abruptly on Friday night, via a brutally worded newspaper interview in which she accused ‘dinosaur’ Labour colleagues at Westminster – implicitly including Ed Miliband – of running the Scottish party ‘like a branch office of a party based in London’.
The immediate cause of her departure appears to have been London’s decision to fire Ian Price, the party’s general secretary in Scotland, without consulting her, but there has also been simmering anger in Scotland over the role of London in last year’s Falkirk selection row, and in watering down Scottish Labour’s tax proposals for Lord Smith of Kelvin’s commission on extending devolution.
A Scottish Labour commission favoured full-blown devolution of income tax, but intervention by several Scottish MPs saw this diluted to a plan to let Holyrood vary more of the basic rate than is currently scheduled, and set a new upper rate. This is arguably the least radical of the income tax reforms set before Smith by the political parties in Scotland.
The weekend brought support for Lamont from two former Labour first ministers, Henry McLeish and Lord McConnell, who both recalled obstruction of their own actions in office by the UK leadership. McLeish spoke of ‘a massive disconnect’ between the London and Scottish parties. ‘Unless there’s a vision for Scotland within the union, we’ll run out of powers to transfer from Westminster and we’ll be heading towards independence.’
Though Labour was on the winning No side at last month’s independence referendum, the weeks since have seen the party plunged into gloom and disarray. Nearly 40% of its supporters voted Yes, some activists were mortified to see it allied with the Tories, and there are reports of many trade union members withdrawing from paying the political levy.
Its Holyrood defeat in 2011 swept away many better-known faces, leaving Lamont’s Holyrood talent pool conspicuously shallow, and it has consistently failed to persuade big hitters to choose Holyrood careers over Westminster. Labour has reported none of the huge post-referendum influx of members recorded by the SNP and Greens, and its campaign was widely seen as sour and negative.
Both Brown and Murphy played prominent parts in the latter stages of the referendum campaign, somewhat eclipsing Lamont. It is likely that, were they to stand, they would stay at Westminster until May’s UK general election, then seek a Holyrood seat, either before or at the 2016 Scottish election.
The timetable for the leadership election provides for candidates to declare an interest from today, with nominations opening on Friday and closing next Tuesday. The ballot will begin on November 17, with the result announced on December 13.
Miliband’s one-member-one-vote reform of Labour voting procedures was not adopted in Scotland. Votes for the Scottish leader and deputy leader are apportioned in equal thirds between parliamentarians (Scottish, Westminster and European), affiliated unions and party members, with candidacy restricted to parliamentarians.
