The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Corbyn to toe Kezia’s line?
Whenever Jeremy Corbyn crosses the border you can almost see the colour drain from the faces of Scottish Labour’s spinners.
The Labour leader at Westminster has a tendency to go off script in Scotland, especially on the constitution.
This time they are confident Mr Corbyn will stay on message and avoid undermining Scottish leader Kezia Dugdale’s increasingly staunch pronouncements on independence.
The Islington North MP, who this week starts a tour of SNP seats including Dunfermline and West Fife, has been practising his lines on the perils of secession.
The problem is that he seems to have held an affection for the SNP and their independence ambitions, or at least an openness to accommodate the Nationalists in their push for Indyref2.
That is not helpful when his party north of the border pegged their general election campaign to virulent opposition to another referendum. You will get two accounts from within Ms Dugdale’s party on how instrumental that was to Labour’s electoral recovery.
The popular view in the Glasgow HQ is that the Lothians MSP and her uncompromising stance on the constitution was the driving force of the revival. But there is an emboldened faction which believes the primary factor was Corbyn and his appeal to those voters disillusioned with the faux left-wing offering from the SNP.
Such divisions are easier to keep a lid on when all elements continue to bask in the surprise return of seven MPs in June, up from the solitary seat two years earlier. Keeping in campaign mode (where Corbyn is at his best) during the Scottish visit will help maintain the Labour push.
But it won’t all be megaphones and handshakes. There will be difficult questions about how the UK and Scottish parties can square the myriad of positions they hold on the other great question of our time – replacing Trident.
Nicola Sturgeon has much to fear from a revived Scottish Labour, with a UK leader’s willingness to be radical exposing the timidity of the SNP Government on domestic issues in recent years. Clinging on to Mr Corbyn slipping up again on the constitution is no longer enough.