Down and almost out... can Labour really fight back?
AFTER he retired from the ring, heavyweight champion Sonny Liston fell on such hard times he ended up as a greeter, dressed up and paid to smile for visitors at a Las Vegas casino. Anyone finding it difficult to imagine anyone – or anything – falling so far or so fast should wander into the Scottish Labour Party conference in Perth, which ends today.
It was only a few years ago that the Prime Minister was the main attraction when the Scottish Labour Party met. Crowds used to gather outside; some to gawp at the political superstars, others to hurl abuse as the most powerful people in the land strode past to take their places on stage.
There haven’t actually been tumbleweeds blowing down the streets of the Fair City over the past few days, but no one would have been terribly surprised had there been, such has been the quiet emptiness of what was once a mighty gathering.
It is not just that the party which controlled every major elected administration in Britain not so long ago is now powerless; the problem is that it doesn’t look as if it is going to get anywhere near power any time soon.
You would think this would make the activists desperate for a return to the days of government. But no: there was a perverse sense this weekend that quite a few of them actually prefer the purity of opposition to the compromises of power.
Back in the days when Tony Blair stood on the platform and talked of the Third Way, there was always a feeling of disquiet.
Some of the activists back then deliberately refused to give Mr Blair a standing ovation; others, usually grumpy old union bullies, kept their hands folded across their ample stomachs in protest.
But this weekend, when Jeremy Corbyn talked to the comrades in the language of unadulterated socialism, they cheered him to the rafters, supremely confident in the infallibility of their beliefs, but hopelessly naive in terms of where this is going to get them.
Mr Corbyn gave them the pure idealism of socialism: Kezia Dugdale, in her first conference speech as Scottish leader, put meat on the bones by telling them what this would mean in practice.
In an address which had those Left-wingers in raptures, Miss Dugdale promised to tax the rich, reverse Tory cuts, increase the minimum wage and give students more to go to university. It was a speech aimed directly at those who had voted Mr Corbyn into power. Even to those outside the hall, it sounded committed, dramatic, even within reach.
BUT the problem Miss Dugdale faces is that, whatever she says, however idealistic she sounds and however far to the Left she lurches to appease Mr Corbyn and his acolytes, her chances of success are so slight as to be almost non-existent.
That is because many of the activists most enthused about the Corbyn l eadership and who delighted in the Left-leaning language espoused by Miss Dugdale are also those who seem to care least about the scramble for power.
There are some in Scottish Labour who realise the party has to get smart and scrap like mad for the centre ground of Scottish politics as it is there, and not on the Left, where the battle for Scotland’s future will be won and lost. But they are in a minority now, squeezed out by the idealists, the purists and the campaigners for every trendy cause under the sun.
It is the Left-wingers and the militants who are happy now. They have a UK leader they can relate to, they have policies they really believe in and they have their party back: and that is all that seems to matter.
The one feeling that seemed to emanate from this conference more than other was contentment. These people seem content with the party as it is, even though, by any rational assessment, it is in the political equivalent of the intensive care unit.
Everybody at the Scottish Labour conference this weekend knows that their party is going to be steamrollered by the SNP machine in May – yet there is no sense of panic, no edge of impending doom.
Indeed, it was hard to avoid the impression that these same people will be back in a year’s time, applauding ever more Leftwing policies and trying to force the party further and further away from power.
The difference will be that, next year, the party will have lost even more elected representatives and will be closer to the fringes of Scottish politics than at any time for 100 years.
Miss Dugdale stood under a huge image of the word ‘change’ as she delivered her speech; but, as an exhortation to those who have already deserted the party for the SNP, it will have little effect.
She may have made the party more idealistic, more strident and more Left-leaning – but there is absolutely no evidence this is going to have any impact electorally at all.
Miss Dugdale has allowed herself to be swept along by the idealism of Mr Corbyn and his fellow travellers.
That may win her plaudits at the Scottish Labour conference; but it will not win her votes in May – and that is the only test that really matters. EVEN the demonstrators, campaigners and hangers-on appear to have realised that it’s just not worth lobbying the Scottish Labour conference now.
Only a few years ago, there were so many lobbyists pressing to get into the conference centre that extra marquees had to be put up to accommodate them all.
This weekend, there was one rather apologetic stall pushing rather tired-looking CND badges – and even those behind it looked as though they would rather be somewhere else.