Battle lines drawn as moderates try to stop Corbynistas’ Scots power grab

SCOTTISH Labour is bracing itself for a new civil war as two opposing factions yesterday plotted to seize control of the party.

Jeremy Corbyn’s allies began preparing to drag the party to the Left after Kezia Dugdale’s shock resignation on Tuesday night – and insisted someone who backs the UK leader must get the job.

But a series of senior figures in moderate factions held secret talks as they tried to stave off the coup and retain power.

Central Scotland MSP Richard Leonard – a former senior organiser at the GMB union who only became an MSP last year – emerged as the frontrunner to secure the top job, after a series of senior pro-Corbyn figures stood aside to allow for one Leftwing candidate.

But it can also be revealed that Glasgow MSP Anas Sarwar held secret talks in the unlikely setting of a cash-and-carry with other moderates as he plotted to become the party’s fifth leader in six years.

Miss Dugdale had angered some on the Left of her party by twice speaking out against Mr Corbyn during UK leadership contests. Martyn Cook, chairman of Camhad paign for Socialism (CfS), the sister organisation of Momentum in Scotland, said the next leader must be a supporter of Mr Corbyn’s agenda and ‘buy into’ the manifesto he published before the General Election.

The influential group, which has the MSP Neil Findlay, a close ally of Mr Corbyn, as its convener, previously claimed that Miss Dugdale’s pro-Union, anti-SNP message in the General Election campaign did not work and prevented the party from winning more seats.

In a report last month, the group also attacked the leadership for being ‘openly hostile’ towards Mr Corbyn.

In a statement yesterday, CfS said: ‘The party must now look to the future and towards the exciting and engaging politics that Jeremy Corbyn’s election as UK leader has delivered.

‘The radical and transformational manifesto of For the Many, Not the Few offers a blueprint for the kind of socialist politics that can revitalise Scotland and bring people back to Labour who have abandoned us in recent years.

‘To achieve that our next leader must work closely with Jeremy Corbyn and build upon the remarkable gains of the General Election in June.’

Miss Dugdale said she had quit because the death of her ‘dear friend’ Gordon Aikman, a former party colleague who died after a battle with motor neurone disease this year, had made her reassess her life and she had decided to ‘pass on the baton’ to a new leader. She insisted she not been forced out by Mr Corbyn’s supporters.

Mr Leonard, who is littleknown among members of the public but highly regarded in Labour circles, became favourite to succeed her after Mr Corbyn’s other main allies – deputy leader Alex Rowley and previous leadership candidate Mr Findlay – said they would not stand.

Lothian MSP Mr Findlay had been one of the early favourites to replace Miss Dugdale. However, yesterday morning he stated he would not stand, but would continue to ‘work towards returning Labour governments at Holyrood and Westminster that work for the many, not the few’.

Mr Rowley, a close ally of Gordon Brown, was also an early frontrunner but insisted at Holyrood yesterday that he would not put his name forward because he does not want to be First Minister. He will take on the role of acting leader, with Scottish Labour’s executive committee not due to meet until September 9 to decide the leadership contest timetable.

He denied that pro-Corbyn factions were taking over the party.

Unite, Labour’s biggest paymasters, called for Mr Rowley to remain acting leader for a sustained period. Pat Rafferty, Unite’s Scottish secretary, said: ‘The party is now rebuilding in Scotland and is rightly seen as the opponent of the mindless austerity of the Conservative Party.

‘We urge the party to reflect upon this turn in fortunes and consolidate, not to act in undue haste on any succession plan. This is an opportunity to reflect upon what the Scottish Labour Party stands for. Let’s seize it and build for the future.’

Mr Leonard, who represents Central Scotland, could not be contacted yesterday.

Mr Sarwar held crunch talks with fellow Labour MSP Jackie Baillie and other moderates at the United cash and carry in Pollokshields, Glasgow.

Mr Sarwar, who owns nearly a quarter of United Wholesale (Scotland), a business founded by his father, the former Scots MP Mohammad Sarwar, refused to comment on the purpose of the meeting.

A Labour spokesman also declined to comment on why the meeting was taking place, saying: ‘Anas hasn’t declared yet’.

‘Next leader must work closely with Corbyn’ ‘Anas Sarwar hasn’t declared yet’

JUST after Kezia Dugdale was promoted to the frontbench team in 2013, a senior Labour figure gave me a warning about her.

‘She could run barefoot across wet sand,’ he said, ‘and not leave a footprint.’

She leaves the leadership of the Scottish Labour Party with the impression of being a thoroughly nice person – certainly with the nicest smile in Scottish politics – but whoever succeeds her will not have an ideology to either maintain or denounce.

There are some fundamental issues that neither she nor the party seemed willing to address. Her successor must do so if the Scottish Labour Party is to make a meaningful recovery – but when analysis gives way to prejudice, as it seems to in the party these days, the signs are not hopeful.

The trauma of the 2014 referendum has still not been overcome. Traditional Labour heartlands voted Yes in that poll and backed the SNP in the following General Election. Labour was routed.

The easy answer to that is to say it was a mistake for Labour to join with the Tories in Better Together and that it was punished for it. But it is not that simple.

The more difficult – and relevant – question to pose is why was it that in those former heartlands the Scottish Labour Party was so disconnected from its core voters that many of them did not even know its position on the constitution?

If the Tories are so toxic, why are some traditional Labour voters now backing them because they see them as better defenders of the Union?

Miss Dugdale’s response to the 2015 General Election result was to be ambivalent on a second referendum and on whether she might vote Yes in it if Brexit happened.

Tired Labour troops who had fought that bitter referendum of 2014 were not impressed. It was the political equivalent of a British general in 1919 saying he was prepared to do the Somme all over again but might fight for the other side this time.

Scottish Labour may have been on its knees when Miss Dugdale took over but that ambivalence managed to take it from second place to third in Scottish politics.

Today the party still seems to struggle with the result of the referendum, despite being on the winning side. And that leads to a second issue to be addressed – this June’s General Election.

It is true that Miss Dugdale had little cut-through with voters, and that private polling gave her ratings that one pollster privately described as ‘unrecoverable’. Nevertheless, Scottish Labour unexpectedly gained six seats. But the ‘Jeremy Corbyn bounce’ to which some have attributed this is a myth.

In truth Labour put on fewer than 10,000 more votes in 2017 than Jim Murphy and Ed Miliband got in the disaster of the 2015 General Election.

Compelling

The more compelling story is not in the seats that Labour regained but in the ones it just failed to win.

In Glasgow East, Labour lost by an agonising 75 votes. The SNP vote had gone down by nearly 20 per cent – but the Tories gained double the percentage of support that Labour did. And it was a similar story in another near miss at Inverclyde.

If Mr Corbyn had any success in attracting voters from the SNP, it was marginal – and at the same time his leadership may have led to Labour bleeding support to the Tories.

But the two myths – that Labour lost support because it was aligned with the Tories in Better Together, and that Mr Corbyn has started the recovery in Scotland – have taken hold. That suggests Scottish Labour will drift further to the Left, which could damage the SNP but would be a gift to Ruth Davidson’s Tories.

The strongest leadership candidate of the Left is Neil Findlay. He has a natural ‘blokeishness’ that could have appeal, an interesting back story and is close to Mr Corbyn, sharing his nostalgic ‘Tooting Popular Front’ politics.

Yet Mr Findlay has ruled himself out and, if he doesn’t reconsider, the Left’s preferences are limited. Deputy leader Alex Rowley has experience but also has a sound understanding of his own weaknesses.

That would leave Richard Leonard. A lifelong trade unionist, he has supporters bordering on a cult. But he, too, has qualities that – however unfairly – are disadvantages in modern Scotland. He is a middle-aged man, and English, and the optics of him against Nicola Sturgeon and Ruth Davidson might not be to Labour’s advantage.

That leaves Anas Sarwar. Energetic and emollient, he will stand only if he believes he can win, and would not want a bitter contest. A moderate, he could do a deal with the Corbynistas – if they can overcome the fact that he is a private schoolboy with a millionaire father.

Scottish Labour having the UK’s first Muslim party leader could appeal to the Left but the analysis that says moving to the Left will help Labour regain Scotland would leave his hands tied.

The June General Election should have been ‘peak Ruth Davidson’, certainly in the short to medium term. But the evidence suggests that Corbynism at least loses as many current Labour supporters as it regains old ones. And while a move to the Left may win back some of the old heartland seats, it might just as easily present new opportunities for the Scottish Tories.

Corbynism is not the road back to power – but it is the end of the road for autonomy for the Scottish Labour Party. When Miss Dugdale spoke out against Mr Corbyn’s leadership, she was speaking for her membership. She appears to have paid the price.

Scottish Labour favoured Owen Smith over Mr Corbyn in the last UK leadership contest, yet that seems to count for nothing. London still controls the finances and hires and fires.

The current Scottish general secretary, Brian Roy, is his own man and is said to have voted for Mr Corbyn. But Mr Corbyn might have a more vivid memory of his father Frank, who was a Blairite whip in the Labour government that the current party leader so often rebelled against.

Surprise

If there are any changes in the personnel at Labour’s Scottish HQ, it will shed more light on the timing of Miss Dugdale’s surprise resignation than she has done so far.

As she shared Mr Corbyn’s five-day tour of Scotland, it would appear that, in a reverse Bannockburn, it was she who was sent homeward to think again. Who could have predicted that London treating the Scottish Labour Party like a ‘branch office’ could lead to a leader’s resignation?

She insists she will continue to play a part in Scottish public life. With her connections to the SNP, perhaps a career in quangocracy beckons, replacing Henry McLeish as the Nationalists’ favourite Labourite. Some think she might go further.

Kezia Dugdale may have been another reluctant Scottish Labour leader, ground down by an awful job, who left little impression on the party.

In the years to come, it will be interesting to see if the Labour Party has left any detectable impression on her.