Back to the viper’s nest
She has been voted off TV’s ‘I’m a Celebrity’, but now Kezia’s troubles REALLY begin... as she tries to resurrect her reputation in the snakepit of Scots politics
WHEN Kezia Dugdale became leader of Scottish Labour in 2015, she admitted it was a bit like taking on Mission Impossible. Some observers agreed, questioning whether a relative unknown should ever have screen-tested for such a major role.
They worried that her performances were rarely imbued with the charisma required for Holyrood’s A-list, never mind Hollywood’s.
This summer, she caved in to the inevitable and quit after two years, the only slight surprise being how long she survived in the job. What happened next was more of a shock, as ‘Kez’ was revealed as a contestant on the latest series of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!.
Critics reached for their dictionary to make sure they had a good grasp of their terminology before reacting.
Celebrity: a famous person, especially in entertainment or sport. Synonyms: VIP, a personality, a big name, a household name. It doesn’t say anything about MSPs, especially serving MSPs. The inevitable storm blew up as Miss Dugdale was accused of abandoning her party, her constituents, and even, it has now emerged, her father’s surprise 70th birthday celebrations, all in the apparent pursuit of personal fame. A senior Labour colleague branded the move ‘utterly ludicrous’
What started badly was destined to end badly. And this time there was nothing surprising about how brief her stint in the limelight lasted.
Having been parachuted into the Australian jungle as a late arrival, her lacklustre showing meant that last night she became the second of this year’s contestants to be booted off the show following a public vote.
There must have been a frisson of déjà vu as ten million television viewers meted out the same kind of damning verdict on her performance usually reserved to the Scottish electorate.
As she made her way across the high wooden bridge back to the real world, she must have wondered whether the near six-figure cheque she is rumoured to be picking up for taking three weeks off from her day job will be worth the storm of criticism and ridicule she still faces on her return home.
She is only too aware of the chorus of disapproval that greeted her participation on the show. Speaking before entering the jungle, she said: ‘[People] will be angry because they will say I should be doing my day job and I am going to be away. I understand that anger.
‘I’ve seen them be angry over similar things other people have done but I can’t help but think that it is an amazing opportunity to talk to millions of people about the Labour Party, its values and how it is different.’
If it sounded naïve then, so it has proved. Even the programme makers are reportedly dismayed by how little political argy-bargy there has been in camp, given that the MSP was vying alongside Stanley Johnson, former Tory MEP and father of Boris, to be crowned King or Queen of the Jungle. If Miss Dugdale was supposed to play the media-savvy political bruiser, she flunked it.
In truth, politicians’ attempts to mix it with footballers’ wives, boy band members and reality stars usually holds all the appeal of a smoothie blended from a bull’s undercarriage. You only have to look at how former MP George Galloway’s cringeworthy turn as a cat lapping milk in the Big Brother house in 2006 damaged his credibility forever.
SIMILARLY, Miss Dugdale has been allowed few opportunities to discuss the Barnett formula or Scotland’s policing crisis as she struggled with the infamous Bushtucker Trials and clashed with campmates. A largely peripheral figure in discussions around the camp fire, she even failed in her bid to become elected the camp’s prime minister.
While friends and allies will attempt to put the best possible gloss on this sorry mess, it is impossible not to wonder whether she has strayed so far from the beaten track that she might never find her way back from the political wilderness.
Before her elimination, a close friend insisted: ‘Kez always said she would be back in time for the Scottish Budget debate. She will be straight back to work when she arrives back in the UK. She will vote in Holyrood the day she’s back and will hold surgeries the same week.’
In the short term, of course, that is exactly what she will do. But, at the age of 36 and with a political hinterland that really only stretches back to her early 20s, might it not be tempting for her to quietly slip into the shadows like so many former leaders do and find a renewed purpose away from what she has called the ‘snakes and cockroaches’ of the Scottish parliament?
After all, it is not as if this daughter of a head teacher and a local government officer was born into politics. No teenage agitator, she went to Aberdeen University to study law because she got the grades. In a previous interview with the Scottish Daily Mail, she confessed the decision was partly driven by a romanticised, small-screen version of the profession: ‘I shouldn’t have done it. I thought that doing law would be like [US TV show] Ally McBeal. I watched a lot of Ally McBeal and I thought, “I’m going to spend all my time in courtrooms, then I’m going to sit in a jazz bar at night. I want that, I’m going to do that”.
THEN I started and realised criminal law is only one-sixteenth of the whole degree, and you don’t get to pick your courses. I didn’t remotely enjoy it. I learned pretty early on that I didn’t actually want to be a lawyer.’
She showed little inclination for student politics, either, though rose to become the vice-president of the Aberdeen University Dolly Parton Society. Perhaps more tellingly, given recent developments, when asked to reveal a secret about herself in the interview, she announced that she’s been on two TV game shows.
‘I was on Pick A Number when I was in primary school, and then I went on Passport Quiz when I was a student with a flatmate,’ she said.
‘I lost because I couldn’t remember which president was on the $1 note. My flatmate was furious.’ She also auditioned for the Weakest Link but had to give it up because it clashed with a university exam.
It would be churlish to suggest that earning a spot on I’m A Celebrity is payback for that missed opportunity, but her fondness for TV shows predates any grand political designs.
After university, she worked as a waitress, spent time on the dole and became a student welfare officer in Edinburgh. It was only after moving to the capital that she fell into politics, persuaded to join Labour by a flatmate. The first person she met was former leader Iain Gray, and by the end of her first local party meeting she had become constituency secretary, later working as an aide to Labour MSP George Foulkes.
According to Miss Dugdale, her parents were so startled by her entry into politics that they ‘sometimes look at me like a zoo exhibit’. Her father, Jeff, a one-time Tory who became an ardent supporter of the SNP, would often chastise her on Twitter.
‘My dad’s line would be, “I’m so incredibly proud of you, but you’re wrong”,’ she once said.
He must have regarded his only daughter’s rapid rise up the party ranks as equally astounding, given her ability to stay under the political radar.
Her strengths were organising and electioneering and, by 2011, she was looking after two key seats while running on the Lothian regional list herself. Labour lost both the seats,
but the list system got her into Holyrood.
‘I expected to wake up the morning after that election to a redundancy package and three months to work out what I was going to do with the rest of my life. Instead I woke up as an MSP. It was surreal,’ she said. From accidental MSP, she rose to accidental leader following Labour’s disastrous showing at the 2015 general election which cost her predecessor, Jim Murphy, his seat and stewardship of the Scottish party.
She had served as his reluctant deputy for a year, describing herself as ‘the sidekick, not the superhero’, declaring that whatever the party needed in a leader ‘I don’t have it’.
Within a year, she had found the backbone to pilot the ship, but it was a rough ride, especially around the time of the Brexit referendum, which opened up rifts within communities and families. ‘I’m not particularly tribal,’ she once said – quite an admission in a world as divided as politics. The other aspect of party leader she disliked was the increased focus on her private life. She was furious at being forced to reveal she was gay during last year’s Holyrood election campaign after a magazine outed her. She later revealed that she and her partner of nine years, college lecturer Louise Riddell, were due to marry, but just five months after getting engaged the affair was over. The split coincided with the death of her close friend, Gordon Aikman, who passed away at the start of this year after a public battle with motor neurone disease. Then, in August, she quit the leadership. It seemed to come as something of a relief to step away from the spotlight. In September, she was named politician of the year at the Icon Awards in Glasgow and told how she was focusing her energies on a new relationship with Nationalist MSP Jenny Gilruth, 33, and issues such as LGBT rights. For some diehard Labourites, holding down a relationship with someone with opposing political views would be impossible. But Miss Dugdale told the awards ceremony: ‘If I’ve learned anything this year, it’s about spending time with people you love and focusing on the things that are important to you.’
HOPEFULLY, she found time to excuse herself from her father’s party, which she missed to catch a plane to Australia. Miss Gilruth, who remained behind to serve her constituents, has waxed lyrical on her new love’s fondness for Fife, where they spend most of their time at her Markinch home, enjoying beach walks and ham salad rolls in a local coffee shop.
While cheerleading madly from afar, Miss Gilruth was powerless to prevent boxer Amir Khan – a man who knows so little about politics that he is unaware our current Prime Minister is a woman – from delivering the knockout blow on her partner in a row over using too much firewood. ‘She’s just mad, isn’t she?’ he told campmates.
It is a view shared by many back home, and not just avid fans of the show. Richard Leonard, her successor as party leader, has taken a dim view of the whole debacle, insisting she was not given official permission to take part in the programme. She had, apparently, asked for three weeks off without explaining what it was for. The threat of sanctions short of a suspension still hangs in the air, a humiliation for a former leader.
Miss Dugdale has sought to diffuse the row by donating a portion of her £60,000 MSP’s salary to a local charity, along with a slice of her appearance fee, although the exact amount has yet to be disclosed. That is understandable given that she could soon be facing a costly court action after a proindependence blogger announced he was suing her for at least £10,000 damages in a row over an allegedly homophobic tweet.
It is true that on her return she will not have her troubles to seek. With her party’s top job already behind her and her commitment to her constituents called into question, she might feel Holyrood has little left to offer her. Intriguingly, when she leaves the jungle she will be greeted, not by family, but by a former political adviser.
They will doubtless have much to discuss. And when it comes to Holyrood, she might just say: ‘I’m a celebrity… get me out of there!’