Labour pains: Leonard fights on
Amid calls for Richard Leonard to quit, Scottish Labour needs to think careful about its next step
Richard Leonard has insisted he will lead Scottish Labour in next year’s Holyrood election campaign, despite mounting calls for him to quit. Mr Leonard criticised ‘disgruntled MSPS’, who are now demanding he resign
The embattled Scottish Labour leader, Richard Leonard, has moved to stamp his authority on his party after a day of chaos saw internal divisions break out into the open, with resignations and demands for him to quit.
Mr Leonard said he will fight for his position if challenged and insisted he will lead his party into next year’s Holyrood campaign, as he criticised his opponents for starting an “internal war” and threatened them with potential deselection as he called for the party to introduce “new blood” into the Scottish Parliament.
The divisions within Labour, which have been simmering since Mr Leonard was elected in 2017, blew open on Tuesday night when his justice spokesperson, James Kelly, quit his frontbench role.
His move was quickly sup - ported by MSPS Daniel Johnson and Jenny Marra, as well as former MP Ged Killen, who had supported Mr Leonard to become leader. MSP Mark Griffin, who has handled the social security brief for Scottish Labour in Holyrood, also resigned from his p or tfolio role yesterday.
The MSPS said polls which had shown the party slump to just 14 per cent of public support, with 53 per cent of voters responding “don’t know” when asked if he was performing well, underlined the need for Mr Leonard to go.
Mr Kelly revealed a delegation of MSPS had approached Mr Leonard three weeks ago to ask him to resign, and said it was “unacceptable” that after three years “more than half of the public have no opinion” on Mr Leonard, while Mr Griffin said the opinion polls, as well as recent dire election results, “pointed to an extinction level” event at next year’s elections for the party.
Yet other Scottish Labour MSPS, including Rhoda Grant and Neil Findlay backed Mr Leonard to remain in post – with Mr Findlay accusing his Holy rood colleagues of “treachery”.
Mr Leonard said he was “not happy” the resignations and calls for him to go came on a day when Labour had “won the battle for a National Care S er vice to be on the political agenda”, and said the demands for him to quit were an attempt to “distract the Labour Party from what we should be talking about”.
“We want to be an outward facing party, and any one who thinks we will make progress through internal bickering is wholly mistaken,” he said. “I was elected just under three years ago with a clear mandate from the membership of the Scottish Labour party to lead Labour into next May’s elections, and that’s exactly what I intend to do.”
Asked why the last two elections – May’s European vote and the General Election in December – had been so disastrous for Scottish Labour, he said there were “a whole range of circumstances” that affected his party’s fortunes. “One I think ended up being a referendum on Brexit and the other ended up being a referendum on whether we wanted a second referendum on independence or not.”
He added :“When we get to May of next year I do not intend to fail. I’ll be fighting for every vote and for every seat. My ambition is to see a significant increase in the number of Labour MSPS returned to the Scottish Parliament.
“I think we need to see some new blood in here. One of the things the last few days have taught me is we need to see an injection of new voices, a more diverse profile of people.
“It will be for the membership to decide and people will take a view about whether their decision to mount an internal war at this time is serving the best interests of the Labour party, and serving the best interests of the people we are seeking to represent.”
Mr Leonard said he would “absolutely fight on” if there was a direct challenge to his leadership. “I believe that I do have the confidence and the faith and the support of members of the Scottish Labour Party across the country ,” he said. “And so I am keen to demonstrate that I am in tune with them, that it’s Lab our that’s promoting the people’s priorities, and we are winning those arguments.”
NorthEast Scotland MS P Jenny Marra said that if the party did “not change course now, we risk catastrophe ”, adding, “Richard is a stalwart of our party but he can not lead us. That’s the unavoidable truth and change is our best hope.”
Edinburgh Southern MSP Daniel Johnson, said :“It is not easy speaking out but my colleagues Jenny Marra and James Kelly have done the right thing. It is time to recognise the situation we are in and for Richard to step down.”
He said he had attempted to raise concerns and make “constructive suggestions” over Labour’ s future, but “these have gone unheeded and there has been no change in approach or performance”.
He added: “Continuing like this will be disastrous for our party and is why I no longer have confidence in Richard Leonard’s leadership.”
Former Scottish Labour MP MP Ged Killen, who lost his seat after Labour was reduced to just one MP in the December General Election, said while Mr Leonard was an “honest, decent man”, under his leadership “things have gone from bad to significantly worse. Every party member I speak to is in despair. He must now do the decent thing and resign.”
If Richard Leonard had been leader of the Scottish Conservatives, he would have been cast aside with the party’s typical ruthlessness long ago.
Jackson Carlaw was given just five months before he concluded he was not “the person best placed” to make the case for the Union as polls showed growing support for independence. He had hardly finished saying his goodbyes when his successor, Douglas Ross, took over after a leadership contest in which he was the only contender.
Labour, however, has always been a more fractious party with disputes over ideological purity far too often deemed more important than winning elections. Clearly Leonard’s rise to Scottish leader was part of the party’s move to the left and, with Jeremy Corbyn’s departure, attention was always likely to fall on a politician viewed as his representative in Scotland.
The most recent test of Labour’s popularity – last year’s general election – saw the party secure just 18.6 per cent of the vote in Scotland, down 8.5 percentage points on 2017. And a recent poll found nearly 60 per cent had no opinion of Leonard who had a personal rating of minus 28, compared to Nicola Sturgeon’s plus 36.
Leonard may have taken over a party that was already on a historic slide in terms of popularity with the electorate, but he has clearly failed to turn things around. Whatever he is doing, it is not working.
So calls for him to quit from four Scottish Labour MSPS were inevitable with next year’s Holyrood elections looming on the horizon and focussing minds on the consequences of another bad result.
But they should be under no illusions that leading their party will be a difficult job for anyone. Labour does have some able and talented politicians, but being intelligent, hard-working and sincere is no guarantee of success.
Leadership is nebulous quality that requires a degree of popular appeal but also, more importantly, the ability to communicate effectively with the public, to cut through the usual party political noise and change people’s hearts and minds. Labour has had great leaders in the past, but lately they have been left somewhat in the shade by the likes of Ruth Davidson, Sturgeon and perhaps even, despite his shortcomings, Boris Johnson.
Those in Labour who are focused on winning elections will have worked out they will be better off with a different Scottish leader. The party however still needs to think carefully about its next step and know that it can’t bank on any new incumbent improving its plight. But they do need to find a way to transform party’s fortunes or this once-dominant political force risks oblivion.