JUNGLE FEVER
New Labour leader Leonard dodges questions on Kezia Dugdale’s TV role as I’m A Celebrity starts Down Under
RICHARD Leonard tried to dodge the fallout from Kezia Dugdale’s decision to jet off to the Celebrity jungle by keeping a low profile yesterday.
On his first day in charge, the newly elected Scottish Labour leader swerved talking to the press, including the offer of a slot on the BBC’s flagship current affairs show Sunday Politics.
Although he took part in a photo opportunity for the media in Rutherglen, where he joined activists campaigning for candidate Martin Lennon in a council by-election, advisers said he would not take questions.
The new leader also attended a private meeting of MPs and MSPs in an attempt to bring the party together after a bitter campaign. Among those at the meeting were his defeated leadership rival Anas Sarwar and former interim leader Jackie Baillie.
His team insisted former leader Dugdale’s decision to join TV’s I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! was off the agenda.
One politician who was at the meeting told the Record the subject was raised in passing, but then glossed over.
It’s understood any discussion of Lothians MSP Dugdale’s future in the party will be discussed at a separate meeting later this week.
Leonard won a decisive victory over Sarwar on Saturday but it was overshadowed by party splits, a probe into allegations about former deputy Alex Rowley’s behaviour and Dugdale’s surprise TV appearance.
Dugdale, 36, is joining boxer Amir Khan, Boris Johnson’s dad Stanley and Saturdays singer Vanessa White down under for the latest series of Celebrity, which started on ITV last night.
While Leonard dodged the cameras, his ally Neil Findlay savaged the former leader in a TV interview.
Findlay said: “I think it’s utterly ludicrous, a ludicrous position.
“We have a situation where we’re in the run-up to the Budget in Scotland, where local government is on its knees, where the NHS is showing pressures like never before, when people’s living standards are falling.
“They expect their MPs, MSPs, councillors, elected representatives to be in fighting on their behalf.
“And I don’t think people would expect them to jet off around the world and sit around the camp fire eating a kangaroo’s appendage.
“I think it demeans politics when people get involved in that.
“We’ve got a pretty serious job to do. People out there are struggling
and there’s huge pressures on public services and that’s the job we should be doing.
“I take my job very seriously and so do my colleagues and I think they would expect better.”
Dugdale’s supporters say she deserves a break after two years in arguably the most thankless job in politics.
One Labour source said yesterday: “Kez worked her socks off for years often with little or no support from some colleagues.
“The very least the party can do is accept she can have a short break to promote Labour values on prime-time TV.
“I suspect Neil’s second job as an author involved considerably more than three weeks.”
UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has already said that he is unworried by Dugdale’s decision.
He said: “It’s her choice to go on I’m A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! I don’t think it’s appropriate to suspend someone from the party for doing that.”
In a statement yesterday, Leonard said: “In communities all over Scotland, Labour has a renewed sense of purpose –and now we have begun the campaign to return our party to government.
“Today we will be talking with voters about the things that matter to them, such as soaring rents and low wages.”
He added that they would offer “solutions rooted in Labour values, like a law to cap the cost of rising rents and promoting a real living wage”.
Left-winger Leonard, who only became an MSP last year, is the fourth person to hold the leadership in the last three years.
He was the choice of 12,469 party members and supporters while 9516 backed Sarwar.