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Wednesday 24 August 2011

The Scottish Labour Leader–a new title needed? Gauleiter?

The Labour Party don’t have a Scottish leader – what they have is the Leader of the Labour group at Holyrood, whose only function has been to keep his MSPs on message and in line, on behalf of his London master, Ed Miliband, and the UK Labour Party.

But now Labour wants a Scottish Leader – a kind of gauleiter. (I will use a more apt and charitable name for the regional leader of a national party if there is one – suggestions welcome from Labour supporters.) Why do they want this? Because they lost the last two Scottish Parliamentary elections. 2007 could be dismissed as an aberration: 2011 was a rout.

It has been an ill wind, one that has blown little good for Labour, although it has provided a role - and presumably a nice little earner - for John McTernan, who has produced a seemingly endless series of articles telling Labour how they got it wrong and what they must do to put things right. More of the same today from John in The Scotsman. He looks south for inspiration, i.e. Westminster and a Labour MP.

Scottish Scots have been no bloody good – the ‘high-road-to-England’ version are what is needed. Of course, John McTernan has never submitted himself to the democratic process – to my knowledge - by running for Parliament. Instead he has been special adviser to just about everybody in the Labour Party. He is of that strange breed, a political strategist for a party whose political strategy has failed utterly in the UK and in Scotland. He blogs for The Daily Telegraph, exactly the right newspaper for a member of the Tory Lite Party, once known as the Labour Party.

John McTernan sniffs the wind carefully, and yesterday a breeze was blowing from Tom Harris MP, who on radio and on Newsnight Scotland threw his hat – well, sort of sneaked his hat – into the leadership ring, such as it is. I know all I need to know about Tom Harris, MP. He supported Blair, strongly supported the Iraq War, supports Trident – and, of course, he supports the UK.

Quote from today’s Herald: “I do not believe there is any great contradiction in looking after Scotland’s interests and the UK’s interests.” Tom Harris.

Tom Harris has already attracted the support of Louise Mensch, a Tory MP, and David Torrance, the Tory blogger and commentator and former Parliamentary Aide to the Tory Shadow Scottish Secretary David Mundell at Westminster. Louise Mensch was positively gushing in her delight at the prospect of Tom Harris’s candidacy. By their friends shall ye know them, as they say …

A seasoned politician, Tom Harris confessed to Gordon Brewer last night on Newsnight Scotland that he knew nothing of the mechanics  of electing a Scottish Labour Leader. Well, the Westminster village does that to a Scot – the state of his native land becomes a faint rumbling way up North – not to be taken seriously unless career is threatened or an opportunity presents itself. Tom, a man steeped in journalism, media and PR, scents both possibilities.

So Scottish Labour may have yet another Iraq apologist, Trident/WMD enthusiast and staunch Unionist as gauleiter. Well, they are all in the job specification. But we could have done worse – it could have been Jim Murphy


12 comments:

  1. A Labour party which is living in La La Land. Are they are all just plain stupid! A political party which has abandoned centre-left never mind left politics.

    Talk about head in the sand and burrowing even further down. Hilarious!

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  2. Come independence all Scottish MPs will be redundant. As for the Lords - well!

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  3. And don't they know it! Hence the sudden interest in their native land. Beware of carpetbaggers, Scotland ...

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  4. I was mortified watching Neswnicht Scotland last night.

    Are Labour incapable of adapting?

    They are still stuck in 2007 mode, refusing to accept the new political landscape.

    They've had years to recover from their slim defeat since then (and complete wipe-out in May this year) yet they still don't bloody get it.

    The party needs to devolve. Simple as that. Of course, if that happened, Labour MSP's would suddenly realise they have more in common with the SNP than they would admit openly.

    Eedjits.

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  5. Labour "not putting forward any kind of alternative"

    No surprise there - they are a right-wing party and the Scots don't want their Tory politics.

    Dual mandates - two pay packets no less

    No surprise there - the money is very attractive in Westminster but Labour leader in Scotland would be a carrot for a future career minded Brit nat.

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  6. But will they donate the extra one to charity, as Alex did?

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  7. They need to do more than devolve JohB - they need to repudiate Blair, apologise fully and unreservedly for the crime of Iraq, and abandon the irrelevant obscenity of nuclear weapons.

    They jist cannae dae it, wi' the likes o' Tom Harris, Douglas Alexander, Jim Murphy, et al in the Party, not to mention the likes o'John McTernan - Blairite /Iraq apologist - trying to revive their corpse.

    And if they did, they would realise that nothing then separated them from the people of Scotland except their bloody party and bloody record, and they would defect en masse to the SNP.

    Labour's deid, stone deid - and Ah'm no' greeting ower the body ...

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  8. Labour are the new Tories.

    That's why the Scots rejected them.

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  9. No, Stevie - Labour are the old-ish Tories.

    This Orange-tinged lot are some new abomination.

    I agree with you, Peter. I'm just still astonished that the North British branch of the party still hasn't got round to looking at party structure, etc.

    Regards

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  10. Structure without values is meaningless - Humanity has left the Labour building, never to return. But not the hearts of the ordinary Labour voters - lions led for so long by corrupt, venal, expedient donkeys of politians. Their hearts - and their votes - are now with the SNP in Scotland.

    But what are they to do in England? Where is the party there that will address their needs? Terrifyingly, it is the siren voices and the parties of the far right that call to them ...

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  11. I believe that once a successful Scottish government visibly demonstrates a caring ust social democracy the English will clamour to policies, maybe even a new party, that will deliver better lives for the citizens.

    It seems a reasonable expectation to me but requires a political change in England led by decent people.

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